THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 


.THE 

STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 


BY 


PHILIP  'GIBBS 


AUTHORIZED  AMERICAN  EDITION  , 
WITH  A  SPECIAL  PREFACE  BY  THE  AUTHOR 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


Published  IQIO 

BY  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 
New  American  Edition,  1919 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

tTO  THE  NEW  AUTHORIZED  AMERICAN    EDITION 

THIS  novel  of  journalistic  life  in  London  was  written 
ten  years  ago.  To  me,  and  to  those  characters  in  the  book 
who  still  survive,  that  seems  a  life-time  back.  Since  then 
I  have  seen  two  wars — the  Balkan  war  which  was  the 
storm-cloud  in  Europe  heralding  the  universal  deluge, 
and  the  Great  War  itself  which  has  left  the  world  bleed- 
ing from  many  wounds,  and  the  soul  of  the  world  stricken 
by  the  remembrance  of  millions  of  dead  boys,  and  of 
untold  agonies,  brutalities,  abominations,  in  those  slaugh- 
ter fields  where  civilization  was  submerged.  The  Street 
of  Adventure  which  I  portrayed  in  this  tale  was  (though 
none  of  us  guessed)  only  a  narrow  alley- way  leading  to 
an  adventure  so  terrific  in  its  melodrama  that  it  anni- 
hilated the  journalistic  "scoop,"  and  newspaper  competi- 
tion in  England  (for  all  journals  were  under  military 
law  and  no  more  than  bulletins  of  official  news)  and  all 
the  traditions,  customs,  and  purpose  of  journalistic  life. 

Those  young  newspaper  men  of  whom  I  write  in  this 
book  regarded  the  work  as  a  peep-show  of  which  they 
were  critics  and  onlookers ;  but  when  the  War  came  they 
found  that  they  could  no  longer  be  aloof  from  life,  nor 
go  to  its  pageantry  and  its  drama  with  Press  tickets  for 
the  "show"  and  a  cynical  amusement  at  the  folly  of  hu- 
man nature.  They  became  part  of  the  pageant,  actors  in 
the  drama.  They  were  part  pf  that  pageantry  of  English 
youth  which  tramped  up  the  roads  of  war  to  the  Ypres 
salient  and  the  Somme  battlefields.  They  took  their  turn 


vi  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

on  the  stage  lighted  by  shell  fire  and  by  white  rockets 
which  rose  all  night  from  the  trenches,  revealing  a  row 
of  gashed  trees,  a  stretch  of  mangled  earth,  and  the 
barbed  wire  hedges  of  the  enemy's  front  line.  Many  of 
their  bodies  lie  under  little  wooden  crosses  in  France 
and  Flanders.  They  did  well,  most  of  them. 

I  met  my  old  comrades  of  Fleet  Street  as  company 
officers,  even  as  majors  and  colonels,  two  of  them  with 
the  exalted  rank  of  General.  They  laughed  when  I  met 
them  and  said,  "This  is  a  great  kind  of  'stunt' !"  or  "We 
thought  we  knew  a  lot  in  Fleet  Street.  .  .  .  Now  we're 
beginning  to  find  out!"  One  character  in  this  book, 
whom  I  met  one  night  at  a  fancy  dress  ball — he  was,  I 
remember,  in  the  costume  of  Sir  Francis  Drake — became 
a  gunner  in  a  field  battery.  During  the  war  I  used  to  see 
him  now  and  then  in  odd  places,  and  once  he  drew  me 
aside  and  said,  "I  can't  stand  this  much  longer.  My 
nerve  is  beginning  to  crack.  It's  not  that  I  am  afraid  of 
death — that  is  nothing! — but  this  constant  shell  fire 
shakes  one  to  bits."  He  was  killed  somewhere  beyond 
the  Somme. 

Some  of  them  remembered  "The  Street  of  Adventure," 
which  had  put  their  old  way  of  life  into  the  form  of 
fiction.  One  day  in  1915  I  was  up  in  "Plug  Street" 
Village,  a  most  unhealthy  spot  not  far  from  Armentieres, 
and  a  young  officer  of  a  London  regiment  which  had  just 
been  in  a  desperate  little  fight,  sent  word  for  me  to  visit 
him  in  his  billet.  He  was  taking  a  bath  in  a  big  tub  in 
the  loft  of  a  shell-broken  house  and  stretched  out  a  soapy 
hand  to  me.  "I  say,"  he  began,  "you  ought  to  have  let 
Frank  Luttrell  marry  Katherine.  It  was  too  bad  of  you 
to  have  it  like  that !"  At  another  time  I  went  up  to  our 
outpost  line  beyond  Gommecourt,  where  a  trench  mortar 
company  had  made  a  rush  into  a  place  called  Pigeon 
Wood  and  were  arranging  to  blow  the  Germans  out  of 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  vi£ 

another  place  called  Kite  Copse,  two  hundred  yards 
away.  They  were  anxious  for  me  to  see  the  "show,"  and 
on  the  way  up  a  sergeant,  who  was  my  guide  across  the 
battlefield  where  German  "crumps"  were  bursting,  turned 
to  me  with  a  grin  and  said,  "This  is  another  'Street  of 
Adventure/  I  liked  the  other  best  1" 

Unlike  many  colleagues  in  Fleet  Street,  I  still  remained 
an  onlooker,  as  an  official  war-correspondent  with  the 
British  Armies  in  the  Field.  I  was  still  the  servant  of 
Fleet  Street,  writing  words,  words,  words,  when  all  the 
world  was  dying — the  world  I  had  known.  I  hated  the 
job,  but  it  had  to  be  done,  so  that  the  pictures  of  war 
should  be  described,  and  the  agonies  of  war  known,  and 
the  valour  of  youth  recorded.  I  did  not  care  a  damn 
about  Fleet  Street  then.  I  wrote  for  the  sake  of  the  sol- 
diers. I  wrote  as  a  chronicler  of  their  history  and  their 
sufferings ;  and  I  shared  in  my  soul  the  things  they  feared, 
and  their  tragic  doubts  and  despairs,  and  the  intolerable 
boredom  of  exile  from  normal  life,  and  the  smells  and 
sights  and  sounds  of  the  fields  in  which  they  fought.  I 
was  not  quite  aloof,  nor  only  an  onlooker.  .  .  . 

In  this  novel  there  is  a  true  picture  of  Fleet  Street 
before  the  war.  Many  of  the  characters  have  been  recog- 
nised as  real  people  and  have  forgiven  me  for  my  por- 
traits of  themselves,  not  unkindly  in  intention  even  when 
touched  with  caricature,  as  in  one  or  two  cases.  It  is 
no  secret  now  that  the  newspaper  was  "The  Tribune/' 
which  lived  and  died  before  the  war,  as  one  of  the  most 
unhappy  adventures  in  Fleet  Street.  Many  of  the  inci- 
dents were  pure  inventions  on  my  part,  typical  of  journal- 
istic life  in  London,  but  not  associated  with  actual  hap- 
penings in  "The  Tribune"  office,  and  some  of  the  minor 
characters  and  their  actions  have  no  reference  to  the  his- 
tory of  that  newspaper.  What  is  more  real,  I  think,  than 
the  incidental  episodes  of  the  narrative  is  the  atmosphere 


viii  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

and  psychology  of  the  journalistic  picture,  which  ought 
to  be  true  because  it  is  part  of  my  own  life.  The  spirit 
of  youth,  with  its  hopes  and  laughter  and  tears,  dwells 
a  little,  perhaps,  in  this  Street  of  Adventure,  and  is,  I 
imagine,  the  secret  of  its  success.  It  is  a  youthfulness 
which  has  passed  as  far  as  I  am  concerned — four  and  a 
half  years  of  war  knock  the  boyhood  out  of  one's  heart — 
but  it  will  be  renewed  by  other  young  men  and  women 
following  in  the  footsteps  of  Frank  Luttrell  and  Katherine 
Halstead  down  the  old  street  where  there  are  many 
ghosts. 

London, 
May,  1919. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 


THE 
STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 


CHAPTER  I 

A  YOUNG  man  in  a  grey  tweed  suit  and  a  bowler  hat 
stood  gazing  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  way  at  the 
swing  door  of  a  long  white  building  in  a  narrow  street. 
Several  times  he  had  walked  from  one  end  of  the  street 
to  the  other,  stopping  once  to  light  a  cigarette  with  a 
nervous  hand,  and  then  throwing  it  away  after  a  few 
whiffs.  The  doorway  at  which  he  now  stared  seemed  to 
have  a  fascination  of  a  strange  kind,  attracting  and  repell- 
ing him  at  the  same  time.  Once  he  crossed  the  road  at 
a  sharp  pace  as  if  he  would  go  straight  up  the  steps  into 
the  building,  and  then  turned  off  again  and  strolled  away. 
But  he  came  back,  and  at  last,  with  a  low,  nervous  laugh 
as  though  amused  at  his  own  hesitation,  took  the  steps 
two  at  a  time,  and  went  through  the  brass-bound  doors. 

Inside,  a  commissionaire  sat  reading  a  pink  paper  in  a 
box-office  with  a  glass  window.  The  young  man  present- 
ed his  card,  and  asked  if  Mr.  Bellamy  were  in.  The 
commissionaire,  without  lifting  his  eyes  from  the  paper, 
jerked  his  thumb  in  the  direction  of  a  staircase  with  tiled 
walls  like  an  underground  lavatory.  The  visitor  went  up, 
stopping  at  a  bend  oi  the  stairs  to  lift  his  hat  and  pass 
a  hand  over  a  high,  ra  r«-oiv-  forehead. :  A  slight  flush  had 
crept  into  his  boyish,  clear- shaven  fa.c.e. 


a  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

On  the  first  floor  of  the  big  building  a  bullet -headed 
man  with  the  face  of  a  professional  pugilist  sat  at  a  desk 
placed  across  the  landing.  On  six  chairs  at  right  angles 
to  him  sat  six  boys  in  uniforms,  sucking  lollipops  and 
reading  penny  dreadfuls  with  flaming  covers. 

The  young  man  put  his  card  on  the  des'c,  and  asked 
again  if  Mr.  Bellamy  were  in. 

"No,"  said  the  man  with  the  pugnacious  face.  He 
turned  to  one  of  the  boys.  "When  you've  made  yerself 
sick  with  them  suckers/'  he  said,  "p'raps  you'll  take  this 
to  the  Russian  Embassy.  And  if  you're  not  back  in  half 
an  hour  I'll  give  you  a  thick  ear,  and  don't  forget  it." 

The  boy  changed  the  lollipop  from  one  side  of  his  face 
to  the  other,  put  a  round  messenger's  cap  at  a  more  acute 
angle  over  one  ear,  took  a  big  envelope  from  the  man 
at  the  desk,  kicked  one  of  his  comrades  on  the  shin, 
and  then  bounded  down  the  stairs. 

The  young  man  in  the  grey  suit  was  fingering  his 
card. 

"When  will  Mr.  Bellamy  be  back?"  he  asked. 

"Perhaps  ten  or  eleven  to-night,"  said  the  man  at 
the  desk  carelessly.  "Very  uncertain.  Leave  a  message  ? 
See  anyone  else?"  He  strode  over  to  one  of  the  boys 
and  boxed  his  ear  smartly.  "  'Aven't  I  told  you  not  to 
kick  your  'eels  against  the  wall,  you  blasted  little  fool? 
Do  it  again,  and  I'll  put  you  outside." 

"Strange!"  said  the  young  man,  "I  have  an  appoint- 
ment with  him." 

"Oh,"  said  the  man  at  the  desk,  "why  didn't  you  say 
so  before?"  He  took  up  the  card  and  read  the  name. 

"Francis  Luttrell.  ...  Oh  yes,  the  Chief  is  expecting 
you.  But  you'll  have  to  wait.  He's  up  to  his  ears." 

"Then  he  is  in!"  .said  the  visitor.  (    • 

"Did  I  say  he  wasn't?  M/ihf^ajke;',  Stand  along  the 
passage  there;  J'll  put  you  tbrough  when  he's  ready." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  3 

Francis  Luttrell  went  past  the  desk  and  stood  against 
the  wall  at  an  angle  of  two  long  corridors,  into  which 
opened  a  number  of  small  doors — opened  and  shut  cease- 
lessly, it  seemed.  The  inhabitants  of  the  big  building 
seemed  to  be  playing  a  game  of  "family  post."  At  every 
minute  or  so  one  of  the  doors  would  open  violently,  and 
a  man  would  come  out  with  a  bundle  of  papers  or  letters 
in  his  hand,  and  go  quickly  into  one  of  the  other  rooms 
along  the  corridors.  Sometimes  two  or  three  of  them 
would  pop  out  of  the  doors  at  the  same  time  and  stand 
for  a  few  moments  talking  in  low  voices,  with  outbursts 
of  laughter,  in  the  passages.  They  seemed  to  be  con- 
fiding extraordinary  secrets  to  each  other,  or  to  be  plot- 
ting some  dreadful  conspiracy.  Luttrell,  the  boyish  man 
in  the  grey  suit,  whose  senses  were  sharpened  by  an 
excitement  which  made  him  almost  feverish,  overheard 
whispered  ejaculations  of  surprise.  "Great  Scott!" 
"You  don't  say  so !"  "Well,  that's  the  limit."  One  man 
a  little  dark  whimsical  man,  smartly  dressed  in  black, 
with  a  brilliant  tall  hat  at  a  jaunty  angle  seemed  to  have 
a  good  story  to  tell.  He  whispered  it  to  five  different 
men  at  intervals,  illustrating  it  by  dramatic  action  with 
a  silver-knobbed  stick.  It  always  had  a  strong  effect. 
Each  man  leant  back  against  the  wall,  and  laughed  until 
the  tears  came  into  his  eyes.  Luttrell  smiled  irresistibly 
at  the  sight  of  this  mirth  and  wondered  what  the  story 
was.  Presently  the  whimsical  little  man,  stroking  a  neat 
black  moustache,  passed  down  the  corridor,  and  glanced 
at  Luttrell  with  eyes  in  which  was  still  a  glint  of  merri- 
ment. It  almost  seemed  as  if  he  were  tempted  to  tell 
him  the  story,  but  he  confided  it  to  the  man  at  the  desk, 
who  was  seized  with  spasms  of  laughter,  which  caused 
the  five  remaining  messenger  boys  to  grin  from  ear  to 
ear. 

The  little  dark  man  raised  his  hand.     "Hush,  not  a 


4  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

word!"  he  said  solemnly.  Then  making  a  pass  with  his 
stick  at  one  of  the  messenger  boys,  and  neatly  striking 
his  middle  button  with  a  sharp  click,  he  went  downstairs, 
jauntily  humming  a  music-hall  song. 

He  came  back  for  a  second,  poking  his  face  round  the 
corner  of  the  passage.  "Tell  the  Chief  I  shall  be  back 
again.  I'm  just  going  over  the  way  for  a  soul-searcher." 

"You've  all  the  luck,  Mr.  Quin,"  said  the  man  at  the 
desk.  Luttrell  still  waited  for  the  interview  which 
would  decide  his  future  career.  The  strain  of  a  high  ner- 
vous tension  had  a  curious  physical  effect  on  him.  Al- 
though it  was  a  warm  day,  his  hands  became  as  cold  as 
ice.  Presently  he  was  seized  with  a  kind  of  terror  at  the 
thought  of  seeing  the  man  for  whom  he  was  waiting,  and 
he  was  tempted  to  tell  the  clerk  at  the  desk  that  he 
had  another  engagement  and  would  call  again. 

"How  long  will  it  be  before  Mr.  Bellamy  is  disen- 
gaged?" he  asked. 

"Don't  know,"  said  the  man  curtly.  But  he  gave 
Luttrell's  card  to  one  of  the  boys  and  told  him  to  take  it 
to  the  Chief.  Luttrell  drew  a  long  breath.  Well,  at  any 
rate,  he  was  getting  nearer  to  that  great  man  who  was 
to  decide  his  fate. 

The  boy  went  into  the  room  immediately  opposite  Lut- 
trell's standpoint,  and  through  a  door  half -opened  Lut- 
trell saw  into  a  large,  comfortably- furnished  room,  where 
a  little  man  with  light-brown  hair,  smoothly  brushed,  sat 
in  front  of  a  long  desk  smoking  a  cigar  and  reading  a 
paper.  He  looked  up  to  glance  at  the  card,  and  then  the 
boy  came  out  and  closed  the  door. 

"Will  see  you  in  a  minute,"  said  the  boy.  The  "min- 
ute" lasted  half  an  hour,  during  which  time  a  bell  sound- 
ed sharply  from  the  room  at  intervals,  causing  one  of 
the  boys  to  bounce  up,  pop  his  head  through  the 
door,  and  rush  off  to  fetch  one  of  the  occupants  of  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  5 

rooms  down  the  corridor.  Among  those  who  entered 
was  a  girl  in  a  flowered  muslin  dress  with  a  picture  hat. 
She  darted  a  quick  glance  at  Luttrell,  and  he  saw  that 
she  had  fluffy  brown  hair,  and  a  piquant,  pretty  face. 
She  stayed  inside  the  room  for  ten  minutes,  and  Luttrell 
heard  the  girl's  laugh  ringing  out,  and  a  man's  voice 
laughing  also,  more  quietly. 

Luttrell  still  waited.  It  seemed  that  everyone  had  the 
right  of  access  to  that  room  except  himself.  He  had  a 
longing  to  do  violence  to  the  man  at  the  desk  who  ig- 
nored his  restlessness  and  sent  his  small  battalion  of 
boys  chivying  away  on  endless  errands  along  the  corri- 
dors. Other  messenger  boys  came  up  the  stairs  and 
banged  pink  envelopes  on  to  the  desk,  which  were  im- 
mediately sent  up  to  various  rooms.  A  constant  stream 
of  visitors  came  also  and  asked  whether  Mr.  Bellamy 
were  in.  They  would  not  keep  him  half  a  minute.  The 
man  at  the  desk  lied  to  most  of  them  with  imperturbable 
insolence,  and  only  two  were  told  the  truth  and  ranged 
alongside  Luttrell  to  take  their  turn. 

For  a  moment  Luttrell  forgot  his  weariness  of  spirit 
and  flesh  in  the  interest  aroused  by  the  appearance  of  a 
newcomer.  It  was  an  extraordinarily  tall  young  man, 
about  six  feet  three  in  height,  who  came  sauntering  in 
with  an  air  of  quiet  importance.  He  had  a  long,  clean- 
shaven face,  which  would  have  been  singularly  handsome 
but  for  rather  tired  and  lack-lustre  eyes.  He  was  dressed 
like  a  dandy  of  the  Georgian  period,  in  a  wide-brimmed 
tall  hat,  a  long  frock  overcoat  tight  at  the  waist,  and 
peg-top  trousers,  with  polish  patent  boots. 

In  a  suave,  melancholy  tone  he  addressed  the  man 
at  the  desk — 

"Are  there  any  letters  for  me  this  evening,  Mr. 
Leach?" 


6  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

The  man  at  the  desk  gave  his  mouth  a  comical  twist 
and  took  a  bundle  out  of  a  range  of  pigeonholes. 

"Eight,"  he  said,  "and  five  postcards  from  a  lady 
named  Beatrice,  who  says  she  is  going  to  drown  herself 
if  you  don't  write.  They've  been  here  a  week,  so  I  sup- 
pose the  inquest  is  over." 

The  tall  young  man  flushed  ever  so  slightly,  and  re- 
garded the  man  at  the  desk  with  a  basilisk  look  out  of 
his  grey  eyes. 

"So  you  read  my  private  correspondence,"  he  said 
quietly,  in  a  low,  mournful  voice.  "I  shall  report  this  to 
the  Chief." 

Leach,  the  man  at  the  desk,  sprang  up  in  a  sudden  pas- 
sion— 

"Look  'ere,  Mr.  Christopher  Codrington,"  he  said  in 
a  low  voice,  "if  there's  to  be  any  tale-telling  I  can  tell  the 
longest  story,  and  don't  you  forget  it." 

He  made  a  step  forward,  but  the  tall  young  man  put 
up  a  long  white  hand  with  quiet  dignity. 

"Go  to  your  place,  Mr.  Leach,"  he  said,  "your  breath 
is  bad.  It  is  most  offensive  to  me." 

He  lifted  a  small  gold  bottle  hanging  to  a  bunch  of 
seals  and  put  it  to  his  nose  in  a  languid,  graceful  way. 
Then  he  passed  the  desk  with  a  long  stride. 

The  door  opposite  Luttrell  opened  violently,  and  the 
girl  in  the  muslin  dress  came  out  with  a  ripple  of  laugh- 
ter. She  nearly  collided  with  the  man  who  had  been 
called  Codrington.  He  stepped  back  and  took  off  his 
tall  hat,  revealing  a  high  forehead  and  smooth  hair  of 
palest  gold. 

"Good-morning,  Miss  Kitty,"  he  said  in  his  melancholy 
voice,  "it  is  good  to  see  you  so  merry  on  this  dull  day. 
It  is  like  sunshine  in  a  place  of  gloom." 

"That  phrase  was  in  your  copy  yesterday,"  said  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  7 

girl,  tipping  up  her  face  in  a  quizzical  way  to  smile  at 
the  tall  young  man  who  bent  down  towards  her. 

He  fingered  a  miniature  on  her  breast  in  an  absent- 
minded  way. 

"Was  it?"  he  said  gloomily.  "It  is  a  simple,  foolish 
one." 

He  whispered  something  into  the  ear  of  the  girl,  wha 
hit  him  smartly  across  the  chest  with  a  roll  of  cartridge 
papers. 

"Tush,"  said  Mr.  Christopher  Codrington,  "you  will 
spoil  one  of  your  pretty  sketches — one  of  those  lovely  un- 
natural ladies,  with  wasp  waists  and  elongated  limbs." 

"I  will  spoil  your  shirt-front,  if  you  are  so  absurd," 
said  the  girl  in  the  muslin  frock.  Then  she  put  her  hand 
on  his  arm.  "I  say,  Chris,"  she  said,  "you  and  I  have 
got  to  go  to  the  Gala  night  of  the  Opera!  I  have  just 
got  a  promise  from  the  Chief." 

"That  will  cost  me  a  new  pair  of  patent  boots,"  said 
the  tall  young  man,  looking  down  at  his  feet  with  an 
air  of  deep  melancholy.  "And  I  haven't  paid  for  these 
yet." 

He  moved  down  the  corridor  with  the  girl,  stepping 
aside  and  bowing  gravely  to  let  her  enter  one  of  the 
rooms,  into  which  he  followed  her. 

Francis  Luttrell,  who  had  listened  to  the  dialogue,  sud- 
denly found  that  his  hour  of  expectancy  was  at  an  end. 

"Now,  then,  the  Chief  will  see  you,"  said  Leach,  the 
man  at  the  desk,  opening  the  door  which  had  opened 
and  shut  so  often. 

Luttrell  flushed  up  to  the  eyes,  took  off  his  bowler 
hat,  and  went  inside,  the  door  being  closed  behind  him. 

"Morning,"  said  a  cheerful  voice  at  his  elbow.  "Sit 
down  over  there,  won't  you — by  the  desk.  I'm  just 
cleaning  myself  a  little.  Filthy  place  this  office." 

Luttrell  started.     He  had  expected  to  find  the  great 


8  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

man  still  seated  at  his  desk,  but  he  was  standing  with  his 
coat  and  waistcoat  off,  in  front  of  a  wash-basin  close  to 
the  door. 

"Good-morning,  Mr.  Bellamy,"  said  Luttrell  nervously. 
He  took  the  chair  by  the  desk  and  glanced  over  at  the 
man  who  was  washing  himself.  He  was  a  smart,  sol- 
dierly little  fellow,  with  smooth  brown  hair  and  a  little 
brown  moustache.  There  was  an  air  of  alertness  in  his 
figure,  in  the  poise  of  his  head,  and  both  his  eyes  and 
mouth  seemed  to  suggest  a  sense  of  humour.  For  a  mo- 
ment his  eyes  met  those  of  the  young  man  sitting  by  the 
side  of  the  desk,  who  was  conscious  that  in  one  quick, 
shrewd  glance  he  had  been  photographed  and  measured 
up  in  the  mind  of  that  dapper  man. 

Silas  Bellamy  whistled  a  tune  as  he  brushed  his  hair, 
and  smiled  at  his  own  thoughts  as  he  cleaned  his  already 
exquisitely  clean  nails  and  polished  them  up  with  a  little 
tool.  He  did  not  take  the  slightest  notice  of  Luttrell, 
who  was  hot  with  nervousness  and  fervently  hoping  that 
this  embarrassing  silence  would  soon  be  broken. 

It  was  broken  when  Bellamy  got  into  his  coat. 

"May  Satan  seize  my  tailor,"  he  said.  "I  would  rather 
be  boiled  in  oil  than  wear  a  coat  tight  under  the  arms." 

He  looked  at  himself  once  more  in  the  glass,  brushed 
a  speck  of  dust  off  his  shoulder,  tightened  his  tie  a  little, 
and  then  sat  down  at  his  desk  with  a  cheery  "Now, 
then." 

Luttrell  cleared  his  throat  and  waited  for  the  open- 
ing of  a  conversation  which  he  had  rehearsed  in  imagi- 
nation a  hundred  times. 

Bellamy,  however,  was  not  in  a  hurry  to  talk  business, 
though  Luttrell  had  left  three  men  outside  clamouring 
to  see  him.  He  took  up  a  bayonet,  brightly  polished, 
which  had  lain  on  a  batch  of  papers,  and  passed  his 
finger  down  the  blade. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  9 

"I  keep  this  for  some  of  my  men/'  he  said.  "When 
I  am  in  a  very  murderous  mood  I  just  show  it  to  them. 
It  puts  the  fear  of  God  into  their  hearts,  I  can  tell  you !" 

"It  looks  a  dangerous  weapon,"  said  Luttrell,  laugh- 
ing nervously.  Then  he  said  in  a  tentative  way,  "Did 
you  get  Philip  Gibbs's  letter?" 

The  Chief  ignored  this  question  and  turned  on  the  elec- 
tric lamp  to  scrutinise  a  spot  of  rust  on  the  bayonet  blade. 
"That's  blood,"  he  said,  with  a  note  of  pride  in  his  voice. 
"This  has  killed  its  man.  I  drew  it  out  of  a  Boer's  ribs 
at  Colenso."  He  twisted  his  little  brown  moustache. 
"By  Jove!  I  saw  some  ghastly  sights  there.  I  could 
curdle  your  young  blood  for  you!  I  was  in  charge  of 
the  Soldiers'  Aid  Fund,  and  scoured  the  whole  field  of 
war.  That's  still  an  untold  tale.  I  could  blast  some 
pretty  reputations  if  I  told  the  truth.  But,  of  course,  the 
truth  is  the  last  thing  told  by  pressmen." 

Luttrell  allowed  himself  to  look  surprised. 

"Is  it?"  he  said;  "I  thought  that  that  was  what  they 
had  to  do." 

The  Chief  looked  at  him  for  a  moment  with  lifted  eye- 
brows. 

"My  dear  boy,"  he  said,  "surely,  surely,  you  don't 
mean  to  say " 

The  telephone  bell  rang  on  the  desk  and  the  Chief 
taking  off  the  receiver  said,  "Excuse  me,'"  to  Luttrell,  and 
"  'ulloa,  'ulloa,"  into  the  mouthpiece. 

Luttrell  noticed  a  gleam  of  affectionate  amusement  in 
the  little  man's  eyes,  and  listened  to  his  disconnected  sen- 
tences. 

"What,  not  in  bed  yet !  .  .  .  you  abandoned  young  per- 
son. ...  I  forgot  to  buy  that  Teddy  bear  ?  God  bless 
my  soul,  so  I  did.  .  .  .  It's  too  late  now.  I'll  buy  it  to- 
morrow. Yes,  honour  bright!  No,  I  shan't  be  home 
till  you're  most  ready  to  wake  up.  .  .  .  Now,  now, 


io  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

none  of  your  cheek,  young  woman!  Good-bye,  lit- 
tle lady.  Love  to  Mrs.  Mother."  He  put  on  the  receiver 
and  laughed  softly. 

"That's  my  daughter,"  he  said,  "aged  six,  and  a  domi- 
nating young  person.  I  haven't  seen  her  for  a  week  ex- 
cept when  I've  been  in  bed." 

He  pressed  his  hands  to  his  eyes  and  yawned. 

"Lord,  how  sleepy  I  am!  .  .  .  Do  you  mind  touch- 
ing that  bell?" 

Luttrell  pressed  an  electric  button,  and  a  boy  who 
seemed  to  be  at  the  end  of  the  wire  pounced  into  the 
room. 

"Glass  of  milk,  Tommy,"  said  the  Chief,  giving  hitn 
sixpence. 

"Yussur,"  said  the  boy,  grinning.  A  few  minutes  later 
he  came  back  with  a  glass  of  liquid  of  deep  yellow  tint 
smelling  strongly  of  whisky.  The  Chief  drank  it  at  a 
breath. 

"Ah !  that's  better.     Wonderfully  good  stuff— -milk !" 

"Let's  see,"  he  said,  after  a  pause,  during  which  he  ar- 
ranged one  or  two  papers  on  a  desk  in  apple-pie  order, 
"you  mentioned  that  letter  by  young  Gibbs,  didn't  you? 
Nice  fellow,  Gibbs,  in  his  own  line,  don't  you  know. 
Here  it  is.  What  does  he  say?  H'm,  h'm."  He 
scanned  through  the  letter,  reading  out  phrases  with  in- 
terpolations. 

"  'Bright  literary  style !'  There's  more  damned  non- 
sense talked  about  style  than  anything  else.  Say  what 
you've  got  to  say  in  the  simplest  possible  way.  'Has  a 
distinct  touch  of  imagination.'  Not  wanted  in  a  news- 
paper office.  Give  me  the  man  who  can  smell  out  facts. 
Imagination  is  as  cheap  as  dirt  and  not  so  useful.  It 
makes  me  tired!  Took  a  second  at  Oxford/  I  agree 
with  Northcliffe.  The  Oxford  manner  is  the  most  per- 
nicious taint  to  a  newspaper  man.'  You  can  hardly  cure 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  ir 

it.  'Sure  he  would  make  his  mark  on  your  paper.'  Oh 
yes,  I  dare  say.  There  are  too  many  marks  on  it  at 
present.  Some  of  them  want  rubbing  out,  and  will  if 
I  have  any  india-rubber  in  my  soul."  He  turned  to  Lut- 
trell  and  smiled  at  him. 

"I  don't  want  to  hurt  your  young  feelings,"  he  said, 
"but  this  is  about  the  most  damning  testimonial  you  could 
have  brought  away  with  you.  It  is  very  characteristic  of 
your  friend  Gibbs." 

"I  am  sorry,"  said  Luttrell,  flushing  hotly.  "I  rather 
hoped— 

He  rose  and  took  up  his  hat. 

"Well,  don't  be  in  a  deuce  of  a  hurry,"  said  Bellamy. 
"Sit  down,  and  let's  have  some  more  of  your  great  gifts.'* 

The  door  opened  with  a  bang,  and  a  big  man,  with  a 
big  face  that  seemed  made  of  the  india-rubber  which  Bel- 
lamy had  wished  for  his  soul,  came  in  without  ceremony 
and  strode  over  to  the  desk. 

"Sorry  to  interrupt  your  strenuous  labours,  and  all 
that  don't-you-know-what,  but  there's  the  Home  Secre- 
tary's secretary  outside,  and  wants  to  see  you  on  official 
business.  My  word!  Oh  dear,  oh  no!" 

"Tell  him  to  run  away  and  boil  his  head,"  said  Bel- 
lamy. "I'm  busy.  If  the  Prime  Minister  comes,  I  can't 
help  it.  I  am  up  to  my  ears  in  work." 

"Yes,  I've  noticed  you  do  overwork  yourself,"  said  the 
newcomer,  twisting  his  mouth,  and  giving  a  vast  wink 
with  one  big  eye  to  Luttrell.  "Oh  yes,  we  have  to  be  very 
careful  of  our  editor!  Don't  you  know,  what?  Well! 
well ! — what  am  I  to  tell  him  ?  After  all,  we  are  a  Gov- 
ernment paper.  We  must  be  civil  to  these  official  fools." 

"I  suppose  it  is  about  the  Unemployed,"  said  Bellamy. 
"Tell  him  to  drive  them  into  Trafalgar  Square,  and  play 
the  Catling  guns  on  'em.  It's  the  only  remedy." 


12  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"All  right/'  said  the  big  man,  taking  a  tremendous 
stride  to  the  door. 

Bellamy  called  him  back,  laughing. 

"Seriously,  Vicary,  I  can't  be  bothered.  Put  him  on 
to  Codrington,  who  loves  gentlemen  of  state,  and  over- 
awes them  with  his  Ranelagh-Gardens-Charles-Grandison 
style.  Tell  him  to  say  that  we  are  in  deep  sympathy 
with  the  Unemployed,  and  are  determined  that  this  ques- 
tion shall  be  settled,  and  that  we  have  every  desire  to 
help  the  Government — and  that  sort  of  tosh— you  know !" 

Vicary  shook  an  enormous  fist  at  his  Chief,  and  leered 
at  him  with  big  eyes. 

"Oh,  oh !"  he  said.  "One  of  these  days,  when  you  put 
up  for  Parliament " 

He  laughed,  a  rich  chuckling  laugh,  and  went  out  of 
the  room. 

"That's  Vicary,"  said  Bellamy;  "that's  the  man  that 
will  make  you  like  the  toad  under  the  harrow  if  I  am 
weak  enough  to  add  to  my  salary  list." 

"I  wonder  if  you  will,"  said  Luttrell,  leaning  forward 
with  a  feeble  effort  to  restrain  his  eagerness.  "I  believe 
I  could  do  good  work  for  you.  I  have  written  a  good 
many  different  kinds  of  articles  and  have  had  signed 
things  in  the  Spectator,  and  so  on — and  I'm  very  keen." 

"Did  you  say  the  Spectator?"  said  Bellamy,  starting 
back  with  a  mock  air  of  fright.  "That  is  wheje  our  lead- 
er-writers get  their  training;  and  that  is  why  this  paper 
has  half  the  circulation  it  ought  to  have.  I  am  afraid 
you  are  too  serious,  too  wise,  and  too  good  for  us,  Mr. 
Luttrell,  sir." 

Luttrell  laughed. 

"I  have  written  for  the  Star,  the  Police  Gazette,  and 
the  Domestic  Servants'  Weekly"  he  said. 

"Ah,  now  you're  talking,"  said  Bellamy.  "If  you've 
written  for  the  Police  Gazette,  there's  some  hope  for  you. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  13 

Facts,  Mr.  Luttrell,  that's  what  we  want.  Life,  passion, 
drama,  the  human  heart.  That  is  what  makes  a  news- 
paper circulation.  When  I  was  religious  editor  of  the 
Chicago  Angel " 

The  door  opened,  and  a  man  in  a  white  apron  came 
in  with  a  bundle  of  long  proofs  which  he  put  on  the 
desk.  "We're  already  five  columns  short  of  being  over- 
set," he  said. 

Bellamy  looked  at  him  and  a  strange  expression  crept 
into  his  steel-blue  eyes.  He  brought  his  hand  down  with 
a  bang  on  to  a  gong  on  the  desk.  Before  the  ring  of  it 
had  died  away,  a  boy  rushed  in. 

"Tell  Mr.  Swale  to  come  here,"  said  Bellamy. 

He  picked  up  his  bayonet  and  weighed  it  in  his  hand. 

An  elderly  man  with  grey  hair,  much  ruffled,  and  a 
massive,  clean-shaven  face  with  dark  bags  under  his 
eyes,  came  in  rather  hurriedly. 

"Do  you  see  this  bayonet?"  said  Bellamy. 

The  elderly  man  put  on  his  spectacles  and  looked  at  it. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  with  just  the  faintest  flicker  of  a  smile 
on  his  lips;  "I've  seen  it  before." 

"Well,  you'll  feel  it  underneath  your  fifth  rib,"  said 
Bellamy. 

He  sprang  up  from  his  chair  with  such  real  passion 
that  the  elderly  man  started  back. 

"My  God!  Swale,"  he  said.  "Hicks  tells  me  that 
we're  five  columns  short  of  being  overset,  and  it's  only 
ten  o'clock." 

"Well,  look  at  the  state  of  things,"  said  the  elderly 
man.  "There's  the  Unemployed  riot  at  Manchester,  the 
Suffrage  raid  on  the  House,  the  Colonial  Secretary  at 
Leeds " 

Bellamy  dropped  wearily  into  his  chair  again.  "You 
make  me  tired,"  he  said.  "If  there  was  an  earthquake 
at  Tooting  Bee,  and  if  all  the  animals  at  the  Zoo  broke 


14  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

loose  and  dined  off  the  population  round  Regent's  Park, 
you  can't  get  more  than  fifty-six  columns  in  an  eight- 
page  paper.  That's  simple  arithmetic." 

The  elderly  man  took  a  pinch  of  snuff  with  an  air 
of  unconcern,  but  his  face  was  hotly  flushed. 

"I  try  to  keep  the  stuff  down  as  much  as  possible,  but 
all  your  young  gentlemen  will  overwrite  themselves." 

"Well,  go  away,"  said  Bellamy.  "We'll  talk  about  this 
to-morrow  when  the  proprietor  comes  up.  This  sort  of 
thing  can't  go  on,  you  know." 

Mr.  Swale's  flush  died  down  and  left  him  with  an  un- 
healthy pallor.  He  hesitated  for  a  moment  and  then 
walked  out  of  the  room.  Bellamy  jotted  down  a  word 
or  two  in  a  notebook  on  his  desk,  and  then  lit  a  cigar, 
which  he  smoked  in  silence  for  a  minute  or  two. 

"Is  there  any  scriptural  authority  for  saying  that  Satan 
was  a  sub-editor  ?"  he  said  presently.  • 

Then  he  looked  across  at  Luttrell.  "Let's  see,"  he 
said,  "where  were  we?" 

"You  were  saying  that  you  thought  of  adding  me  to 
your  salary  list,"  said  Luttrell  audaciously. 

Bellamy's  eyes  twinkled.  "Did  I  go  as  far  as  that? 
Well,  I  don't  mind  giving  you  a  trial.  Is  £4  IQS.  a  week 
any  good  to  you  as  descriptive  reporter?" 

"Yes,"  said  Luttrell.  "It  will  save  me  from  starva- 
tion." 

Bellamy's  eyes  softened. 

"You  have  been  having  a  bad  time,  haven't  you?"  he 
said  in  a  kindly  voice. 

"Pretty  tough,"  said  Luttrell. 

"I  know,  I  know  I  have  been  through  the  mill  my- 
self. I  know  what  it  is  to  be  a  freelance  tilting  against 
iron  walls." 

He  looked  across  the  room,  and  his  eyes  were  dreamy 
for  a  moment  until  a  smile  crept  into  them. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  15 

"I  had  the  best  of  fun  in  the  old  days  when  I  was 
an  adventurer  with  an  average  income  of  twenty-five 
bob." 

He  put  another  word  or  two  into  his  note-book,  and 
said  with  a  return  to  his  bantering  way — 

"That's  fixed  then.  You  sell  your  soul  and  body  to  us 
for  ninety  shillings  a  week?" 

"I  hope  you'll  not  regret  the  bargain,"  said  Luttrell. 

"Oh,  I  dare  say  I  shall,"  said  Bellamy.  "Anyhow, 
I  will  give  you  my  usual  words  of  advice  to  those  who 
join  my  staff.  Make  a  note  of  them,  won't  you  ?" 

Luttrell  pulled  out  a  pencil  and  took  a  loose  sheet  of 
paper. 

"They  are  all  'dent's/  "  said  Bellamy.  "Don't  wear 
your  hair  long.  Don't  wear  a  bowler  hat  with  a  tail-coat. 
Don't  say  'on  a  ship/  Don't  use  a  foreign  word  when 
there  is  an  English  one  in  the  dictionary.  Don't  have 
serious  convictions  on  any  subjects  in  the  world." 

He  interpolated  an  explanation. 

"There  have  been  more  pressmen  ruined  by  serious 
convictions  than  by  drink.  I  have  two  men  at  present 
suffering  from  that  disease.  Between  ourselves,  I  have 
sentenced  them  both  to  death.  One  is  a  young  gentle- 
man who  once  did  a  Cook's  tour  in  Belgium  and  has  Bel- 
gium on  the  brain.  He  will  drag  it  in  if  he  is  writing  a 
leading  article  on  Woman's  Suffrage,  or  Tariff  Reform. 
Another  man  once  went  to  tea  with  a  Russian  anarchist 
and  was  filled  with  serious  convictions  on  Russian  free- 
dom. Consequently  we  ignore  Paris,  Berlin  and  Vienna, 
and  devote  ourselves  to  the  interests  of  Jewish  cut- 
throats and  Russian  murderers  in  Moscow  and  St.  Pe- 
tersburg." 

He  paused  and  looked  sharply  at  Luttrell. 

"Are  there  any  more  don'ts?"  said  the  young  man. 

"Yes,"    said    Bellamy.      "Don't    have    any    political 


16  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

opinions.  A  pressman  must  write  from  a  brief,  not  from 
his  soul." 

He  rose  and  shook  hands  with  the  new  member  of  his 
staff. 

"You  can  start  work  to-morrow  if  you  like.  Go  and 
see  Vicary.  I  will  tell  him  I  have  taken  you  on.  Be- 
fore a  week's  out  he  will  teach  you  the  deepest  signifi- 
cance of  hell  on  earth." 

Luttrell  thanked  him,  warmly  and  eagerly,  but  Bel- 
lamy touched  his  gong  and  a  boy  came  in. 

"Next  man,"  said  Bellamy. 

As  Luttrell  was  going  out  Bellamy  called  him  back 
for  a  moment. 

"Have  you  heard  the  story  about  the  Rector's  daugh- 
ter?" he  said,  laughing  softly  to  himself. 

"No,"  said  Luttrell,  smiling;  "what  is  it?" 

"Well,  if  you  are  tempted  to  hear  something  very 
wicked  and  very  witty  you  ask  Quin  to  tell  you.  He's 
inimitable.  .  .  .  Good-night." 

Francis  Luttrell  went  out  of  the  building  which  was 
humming  with  a  strange,  throbbing,  booming  sound  as 
though  a  million  bees  were  swarming,  and  turning  into 
Fleet  Street  stood  under  a  lamp-post,  staring  across  the 
roadway  with  a  peculiar  light  in  his  eyes. 

"Thank  Heaven !"  he  said  aloud,  "my  luck  has  turned 
at  last" 


CHAPTER  II 

FRANCIS  LUTTRELL  was  rather  typical  of  the  "only 
son."  I  had  known  him  first  as  a  shy,  good-looking  boy  in 
a  country  vicarage  where  he  was  the  idol  of  his  mother 
and  father,  who  tried  very  hard,  but  quite  vainly,  to  hide 
their  idolatry  from  him.  His  father,  the  Rector  of  High 
Stanton,  was  a  thoughtful,  literary  man,  with  what  used 
to  be  called  "high  ideals" — it  is  an  old-fashioned  phrase 
now — and  a  broad  humanitarianism.  But  he  was  unpop- 
ular in  his  living,  because  he  had  a  touch  of  mysticism 
which  made  him  an  enigma1  to  the  small  shop-keepers  and 
middle-class  gentry  of  the  little  country  town.  They 
mistook  his  reserved  nature,  absent-mindedness  and  in- 
tellectual culture  for  pride.  The  truth  is  that  the  man 
was  far  above  the  level  of  the  people  among  whom  he 
lived,  and  it  was  a  real  torture  to  him  to  be  impelled 
day  by  day  and  year  by  year  to  bring  himself  down  to 
their  small  ideas,  and  to  limit  his  vision  to  the  narrow 
outlook  of  his  parish.  Yet,  far  from  being  proud,  he 
had  a  deep  humility  of  spirit,  and  he  rebuked  himself 
constantly  for  what  he  knew  was  his  failure  to  gain  the 
confidence  and  affection  of  his  people.  His  sensitive 
spirit  shrank  from  the  bickerings  and  scandals  and  gos- 
sip-mongering  of  the  men  and  women  who  came  to  criti- 
cise as  well  as  to  pray  in  his  church,  and  after  repeated 
episodes,  in  which  he  blundered  badly  in  his  efforts  for 
peace  and  good-will,  he  shrank  farther  into  his  shell, 
and  devoted  more  hours  a  day  to  the  study  of  Greek  lit- 
erature and  archaeology. 

Young  Frank  Luttrell  was  the  heir  to  his  father's  sen- 

17 


i8  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

sitive  and  shy  nature,  although  underneath  that  shyness 
he  had  the  gay  imagination  and  the  desire  for  companion- 
ship which  belonged  to  his  mother,  who  had  faced  a  life 
of  drudgery  and  small  duties  among  commonplace  folk 
with  a  sunny  courage,  which  only  in  secret  was  some- 
times dissolved  in  the  mist  of  tears.  From  his  baby- 
hood they  had  sheltered  their  boy  from  the  rough  world. 
His  father,  remembering  with  horror  his  own  life  at  a 
public  school  where  he  had  been  miserable  among  boys 
of  a  coarse  fibre,  determined  to  save  Francis  from  that 
hard  experience,  and  became  the  boy's  tutor  after  the 
early  years  when  the  mother  had  him  all  to  herself.  As 
regards  mere  knowledge  Francis  was  not  at  a  disad- 
vantage with  other  boys  of  his  own  age.  Indeed,  thrown 
upon  his  own  resources  a  good  deal,  he  developed  a  taste 
for  literature  and  languages,  and  revelled  in  the  English 
and  French  classics  when  most  boys  direct  their  enthu- 
siasm to  football  and  cricket.  Otherwise  he  was  se- 
verely handicapped.  He  had  a  warm  and  intimate 
friendship  with  one  lad,  the  son  of  a  neighbouring  clergy- 
man, but  apart  from  that  he  led  a  lonely,  self-absorbed 
life.  But  for  his  mother's  bright  and  practical  nature 
he  would  have  become  inevitably  morbid  and  neurotic. 
As  it  was  at  the  age  of  sixteen  years  he  had  acquired  the 
rather  dangerous  habit  of  taking  long  solitary  walks, 
with  a  book  of  poetry  or  a  French  play  in  his  pocket. 
His  imagination  was  overstimulated  by  these  wanderings 
in  the  woods  on  summer  days,  and  there  were  times 
when  even  his  father  had  misgivings  and  rather  dreadful 
doubts  as  to  whether  he  had  done  the  right  thing  by  his 
son.  Between  those  two  there  was  a  friendship  of  rare 
tenderness,  but  veiled  by  the  reserve  which  was  natural 
to  both  of  them.  If  they  had  not  been  so  shy  Francis 
would  have  told  his  father  many  of  the  things  which 
stirred  in  his  heart,  and  the  clergyman  would  have  talked 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  19 

more  freely  and  candidly  upon  the  troubles  and  tempta- 
tions of  life.  Avoiding  all  words  of  this  kind  they  dis- 
cussed the  humour  of  Moliere,  and  the  wisdom  of  Dr. 
Johnson,  and  the  characteristics  of  other  great  masters, 
and  Francis  never  lost  his  reverence  for  the  wise  scholar- 
ship, the  fine  taste,  and  the  prodigious  memory  of  his 
father. 

It  was  to  his  mother,  Constantia  Fielding,  that  Francis 
revealed  himself  as  much  as  any  boy  will — and  most 
boys  are  in  hiding  from  those  they  love.  It  was  the 
mother  who  first  guessed  that  at  seventeen  years  of  age 
Frank  was  becoming  moody,  wretchedly  discontented, 
and  possessed  with  a  passionate  desire  for  a  larger  ex- 
perience of  life  and  emotion.  The  blackest  hour  of  the 
little  woman's  life  was  on  a  day  when  the  carpenter's 
wife  came  to  her  with  the  tale  that  the  "Young  Master" 
had  got  her  daughter  into  trouble.  For  a  moment  Mrs. 
Luttrell's  heart  stood  still  and  the  world  seemed  to  crum- 
ble under  her  feet.  Afterwards  it  appeared  that  no  great 
harm  was  done,  and  that  Frank  had  only  hurt  little  Susan 
Budge  by  kissing  her  too  often  in  shady  lanes  on  summer 
evenings.  Frank  .himself  admitted  his  fault  with  a  burst 
of  nervous  laughter,  and  confessed  that  he  had  made  a 
fool  of  himself  with  the  girl,  who  boasted  of  his  kisses 
to  other  lovers  of  her  own  class.  But  it  was  a  grave 
warning  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Luttrell  and  they  did  not  neglect 
it.  Frank  was  sent  off  to  a  coach  at  Maidenhead  after 
some  solemn  and  tender  words  by  his  father,  and  melted 
by  the  sight  of  his  mother's  tears.  But  he  had  the  prom- 
ise of  three  years  at  Oxford,  and  his  heart  jumped  at  the 
thought  of  the  great  adventure  of  life  into  which  he  was 
now  to  plunge. 

He  went  to  Oxford  in  his  nineteenth  year  and  was 
entered  at  Balliol,  where  his  father  had  been  before  him. 
As  a  "fresher"  he  was  not  a  success.  Not  having  been 


20  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

to  a  public  school  he  had  no  ready-made  friends,  and 
was  in  danger  of  living  a  hermit's  life  in  his  rooms.  He 
was  not  good  at  games,  and  was  put  down  as  a  "mug" 
who  would  do  no  credit  to  his  college.  Frank  himself 
cursed  his  thin  skin,  his  early  training,  and  his  utter  lack 
of  all  the  qualities  of  good  friendship.  He  had  a  great 
yearning  to  show  the  men  that  he  was  not  such  a  fool 
as  they  thought  him,  that  he  had  a  game  and  gay  spirit 
and  was  out  for  devilry.  He  began  to  have  a  loathing 
for  all  books  except  those  which  would  teach  him  "life." 
He  read  Rabelais,  and  pretended  to  himself  that  the  Ra- 
belaisian philosophy  was  greater  than  the  teaching  of  the 
prophets.  He  flung  overboard  his  rather  mystical  ideal- 
ism which  he  had  received  from  his  father  and  all  the 
shining  dream-figures  of  that  world  in  which  he  had 
wandered  in  his  lonely  boyhood.  To  the  astonishment 
of  all  Balliol  men  he  distinguished  himself  one  night  as 
the  most  reckless  and  daring  leader  of  a  gown  and  town 
riot,  in  which  there  was  a  serious  fray  with  the  police. 
Frank  Luttrell,  who  was  both  drunk  and  disorderly, 
bashed  in  a  policeman's  helmet,  gave  a  bloody  nose  to  the 
wearer  thereof,  and  after  a  night  in  the  cells  was  brought 
up  before  a  magistrate  and  fined  five  pounds.  He  nar- 
rowly escaped  being  sent  down,  but  received  an  ovation 
from  a  number  of  men  who,  to  his  great  joy,  invaded 
his  rooms  for  the  first  time,  drank  wine  with  him,  smoked 
his  cigarettes  and  slapped  him  on  the  back  as  a  good 
fellow.  The  report  of  that  night's  work  came  to  the 
rectory  at  High  Stanton  as  a  bombshell.  To  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Luttrell  it  was  incredible  that  their  son  should 
have  been  the  ringleader  of  a  disgraceful  riot.  To  their 
minds,  remembering  his  quiet  and  sensitive  nature,  his 
refined  and  pure  spirit,  his  shrinking  from  all  coarse- 
ness and  brutality,  it  would  not  have  been  more  unthink- 
able if  he  had  been  charged  with  murder.  It  was  clear 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  21 

to  them  that  this  was  a  case  of  mistaken  identity,  and 
that  Frank  was  the  victim  of  some  dreadful  error  of  jus- 
tice. Mrs.  Luttrell,  indeed,  believed  that  he  had  sacri- 
ficed himself  to  shield  a  friend.  Then  they  received 
a  letter  from  him  written  exultantly,  describing  the 
night's  scene  with  a  wild  enthusiasm  and  glorying  in  his 
own  achievement.  "At  last/'  he  said,  "I  have  tasted  the 
wine  of  life,  and  it  is  very  good."  To  the  clergyman 
and  his  wife  that  letter  was  the  breaking-up  of  all  the 
belief  in  the  gospel  of  "home-influence,"  and  they  had  to 
grope  their  way  blindly  to  a  new  philosophy  into  which 
their  son's  new  character  could  be  fitted.  After  the  first 
shock  the  mother  understood  the  meaning  of  Frank's 
outbreak  more  clearly  than  her  husband.  She  also,  in 
younger  days,  had  been  tempted  to  "break  out,"  to  scan- 
dalise her  little  world  by  some  unconventional  adventure 
which  would  relieve  the  continual  monotony,  the  deadly 
respectability  of  her  existence  as  a  clergyman's  wife  in  a 
small  town.  These  had  been  secret  promptings  hidden 
even  to  her  husband,  and  alarming  to  herself.  But  now 
they  came  back  to  her  as  an  excuse  for  Frank ;  and  when 
a  card-board  box  arrived  with  a  much  mutilated  police- 
man's helmet  inside,  sent  by  Frank  as  a  trophy  of  a 
"glorious  night,"  she  cried  and  laughed  hysterically,  wet- 
ting that  ludicrous  object  with  her  tears. 

Frank's  breach  of  the  law  was  only  a  spasmodic  ad- 
venture, and  afterwards  he  nearly  lost  his  new  popular- 
ity by  shrinking  again  behind  his  cloak  of  reserve.  But 
he  won  a  position  for  himself  in  his  second  year  by  a 
contribution  to  a  new  Oxford  magazine,  very  daring  in 
its  satire  of  men  and  manners.  Frank  discovered  that 
he  held  a  pen  which  had  the  gift  of  epigram  arid  cari- 
cature. He  wrote  a  series  of  pen-portraits  which  were 
welcomed  by  Dons  and  undergraduates  as  something  new 
and  striking.  For  some  time  the  secret  of  their  author- 


22  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ship  was  not  divulged,  but  when  they  were  traced  to 
Frank  Luttrell  there  was  general  astonishment  that  a 
fellow  of  his  temperament  should  have  such  quick  ob- 
servation of  personal  idiosyncracies,  and  such  a  light- 
hearted  wit.  Another  surprise  was  given  when  it  be- 
came known  that  Luttrell  was  the  author  also  of  a  num- 
ber of  serious  little  studies  in  the  magazine  which  re- 
vealed a  very  intimate  and  rather  mystical  understand- 
ing of  nature.  Luttrell's  dual  characteristics  were  re- 
vealed to  some  extent  by  these  two  styles  of  writing. 
The  gaiety  of  his  pen-portraits  showed  that  in  spite  of 
a  kind  of  timidity  of  manner  among  his  fellows,  he  had 
the  keenest  of  eyes  for  the  little  traits  which  go  to  form 
a  personality,  while  his  nature  sketches  came  from  a 
spirit  which  had  listened  in  loneliness  to  the  whispers  of 
the  nature  world,  and  had  been  filled  at  times  with  the 
Dionysian  ecstasy. 

In  spite  of  these  successes  Frank's  career  at  Oxford 
disappointed  his  father,  who  had  been  his  early  tutor. 
He  came  down  with  a  second-class,  and  was  depressed 
and  dissatisfied  with  himself. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do,  Frank  ?"  said  his  father 
in  the  study,  which  smelt  of  stale  tobacco  and  damp 
books.  "The  Church,  I  suppose?" 

"No,"  said  Frank ;  "anything  but  that,  anything  in  the 
world." 

The  clergyman  raised  his  eyebrows  and  then  smiled 
rather  sadly  at  his  son. 

"You  have  been  prejudiced  by  my  failure,"  he  said. 
"But  for  many  men  the  Church  is  a  good  career.  It 
gives  an  opportunity  of  useful  work ;  a  man  is  able  to  live 
up  to  his  ideals,  as  far  as  the  weakness  of  the  flesh  and 
spirit  will  allow.  He  has  a  good  deal  of  leisure  for  study, 
and  it  is  still  the  position  of  a  gentleman.  Why  not  take 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  23 

orders,  Frank  ?  As  a  poor  man  I  cannot  help  you  to  one 
of  the  other  professions/' 

"There  are  three  reasons  against  it,"  said  Frank. 
"One,  I  have  no  vocation.  Two,  I  detest  religious  ladies, 
scandal-loving  ladies  and  old  ladies  who  wear  red  flannel 
underclothes.  Three,  I  could  never  survive  the  ordeal  of 
looking  and  feeling  such  an  obvious  fool  as  a  curate." 

"Well,  that  settles  it,"  said  his  father,  laughing.  "What 
are  you  going  to  be  then,  Frank?" 

"God  knows,"  said  Frank  very  gloomily. 

Before  the  year  was  out  I  knew  also.  Frank  Luttrell 
became  second-master  at  the  Abbey  School,  King's 
Marshwood.  I  spent  a  week-end  with  him  here  after  he 
had  been  at  the  place  a  year.  He  had  comfortable  rooms 
in  the  charming  old  schoolhouse  looking  on  to  the  Abbey 
Gardens,  and,  beyond  a  clump  of  noble  beeches,  to  the 
Abbey  itself,  grey,  solemn,  beautiful,  and  very  restful 
to  a  man  from  Fleet  Street.  As  we  sat  smoking  in  his 
room,  panelled  and  furnished  in  dark  oak,  with  book- 
shelves round  the  walls  laden  with  French  and  English 
classics  and  with  some  good  prints  after  Raphael  and 
the  Italian  Masters  to  give  colour  to  the  room,  the  Abbey 
clock  chimed  out,  with  deep-toned  notes  that  lingered  on 
the  ear,  in  sweet  and  solemn  cadence. 

"I  envy  you,  Frank,"  I  said.  "The  music  of  those  old 
bells  must  creep  into  your  soul.  The  atmosphere  of  this 
place  would  give  peace  to  the  most  feverish  heart.  Time 
itself  goes  slowly  here."  He  looked  across  at  me  and 
laughed  a  little  impatiently. 

"Yes,  each  quarter  of  an  hour  is  an  hour,  each  hour 
is  a  day.  Oh,"  he  said,  with  a  strange  note  of  sup- 
pressed passion,  "I  sometimes  curse  that  old  clock." 

I  looked  at  him  as  he  sat  leaning  forward  on  a  wooden 
settle  with  his  pipe  in  his  hand.  His  boyish,  clean-shaven 
face  and  his  long  hands  were  beautifully  bronzed.  In  his 


24  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

soft  white  shirt,  flannel  suit  and  tennis  shoes,  he  looked 
a  handsome,  healthy  fellow,  the  typical  Oxford  man, 
with  the  refined  face,  the  easy,  athletic  pose,  the  reserve 
and  quietude  which  belong  to  many  men  of  his  age  and 
class  and  training.  But  there  was  something  in  his  blu- 
ish-grey eyes  which  made  me  feel  a  little  uneasy  about 
him.  It  was  a  kind  of  wistfulness,  which,  when  he  spoke 
the  last  words,  changed  for  a  moment  to  an  expression 
of  suppressed  revolt. 

"You  have  a  good  time  here/'  I  said.  "Pleasant  work, 
short  hours,  long  holidays.  What  more  do  you  want?" 

He  got  up  from  his  chair  and  went  over  to  the  window, 
an  old-fashioned  mullioned  window,  with  little  bulging 
panes,  and  looked  out  to  the  Abbey  Gardens. 

"I  want  life,"  he  said  presently,  in  a  low  voice. 

"Isn't  this  life  ?"  I  answered  after  a  few  whiffs  of  one 
of  his  cigarettes. 

"A  sleeping  life,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  keep  awake, 
I  want  to  see  things,  to  do  things,  to  get  in  touch  with 
modernity.  This  old  town  is  three  centuries  away  from 
modern  life." 

"Yes,"  I  said.     "How  jolly!" 

He  laughed  nervously,  and  sat  down  with  his  legs 
stretched  out  and  his  chin  on  his  chest. 

"Awfully  jolly!"  he  said,  with  sarcasm.  "You  have 
no  idea  how  jolly  it  is  for  a  fellow  of  my  age  and  temper- 
ament to  have  no  other  society  but  the  stupid  boys  and 
doddering  old  clergyman  schoolmaster,  his  thin-lipped, 
bad-tempered  wife,  three  assistants  without  an  idea  be- 
tween them,  tennis  girls  who  don't  even -know  how  to  flirt, 
and  occasionally,  as  a  wild  excitement,  an  ecclesiastical 
tea-party  at  the  Abbey  House." 

"My  dear  fellow,"  I  said,  "you  have  your  books,  your 
pipes,  fresh  air  and  exercise,  and  a  beautiful  environ- 
ment. Also  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  you  could 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  25 

teach  one  of  those  tennis  girls  to  flirt  in  a  quite  delightful 
way.  They  only  want  a  little  encouragement." 

"They  won't  get  it  from  me,"  he  said  savagely.  That 
evening  he  threw  over  some  copies  of  the  Spectator  to 
me,  and  said  in  a  casual  way,  "If  you  have  nothing  better 
to  do,  you  might  glance  at  those  essays  on  the  dog-eared 
pages.  I  should  be  glad  of  your  candid  opinion." 

"Oh,  ho,"  I  said,  "yours,  eh?  I  suppose  you  mean 
you  want  my  cordial  praise." 

"No,  I  don't ;  if  they  are  rotten,  say  so." 

I  spent  an  hour  over  them.  The  essays  were  quite 
good,  with  the  Oxford  touch  a  little  too  apparent,  but 
with  a  very  pleasant  humour,  with  now  and  again  a 
phrase  that  flashed  at  one,  and  here  and  there  a  note  of 
mysticism  and  ecstasy  which  brought  back  to  my  mind 
his  Oxford  sketches  on  nature. 

"Not  bad,"  I  said  at  last.     "Not  at  all  bad,  Frank." 

He  coloured  up  with  pleasure. 

"Honest  Injun?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,  no  codding.  You  have  got  a  rather  pretty  touch. 
Stick  to  it,  and  you  will  get  many  a  nice  little  guinea  as 
pocket-money." 

He  sat  smoking — he  smoked  a  great  deal  too  much — 
while  I  read  another  Spectator  article. 

Then  he  bent  forward  and  said  with  a  little  quiver  in 
his  voice : 

"Look  here,  do  you  think  I  should  stand  any  chance 
in  London — as  a  freelance?" 

"Free  what?"  I  said. 

He  gave  me  a  steady  look  out  of  his  grey  eyes. 

"You  know  what  I  mean,"  he  said  quietly.  "I  mean 
do  you  think  I  could  pick  up  a  living  in  town  with  this 
sort  of  stuff?" 

"No,  I  don't,"  I  said,  without  the  slightest  hesitation. 

He  smiled. 


26  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Well,  anyhow  I  am  going  to  try/1 

"My  dear  Frank,"  I  said  rather  heatedly,  "for  Heav- 
en's sake  don't  make  a  fool  of  yourself.  Don't  get  that 
stupid  notion  into  your  head  that  a  decent  livelihood  is  to 
be  got  nowadays  by  what  people  are  pleased  to  call  a  lit- 
erary career." 

"Some  people  earn  their  living  that  way,"  said  Frank ; 
"you,  for  instance." 

"No,  I  don't,"  I  said.  "I  am  a  journalist  and  news- 
paper reporter,  that  is  to  say,  a  miserable  wretch  who  has 
sold  his  body  and  soul  to  Fleet  Street." 

"You've  written  books,"  said  Frank. 

I  laughed.     My  friend  Frank  was  very,  very  young. 

"Oh  yes,  I  have  written  books  of  a  kind,"  I  said. 
"They  have  never  paid  for  my  washing  bills.  That  is 
why  I  went  back  to  Fleet  Street.  In  this  life  it  is  neces- 
sary to  pay  one's  washerwoman. 

"Je  n'en  vois  pas  la  necessite,"  said  Frank  with  a  sud- 
den flash  of  humour.  Then  he  added,  "After  all,  as  you 
say,  there  is  always  Fleet  Street." 

I  looked  at  him  squarely. 

"Not  for  you,  Frank.  There  is  not  an  editor  in  Fleet 
Street  who  would  give  you  a  billet,  at  least  not  on  my  rec- 
ommendation. You  have  not  roughed  it  enough.  You 
are  a  sensitive  plant.  Fleet  Street  would  kill  you  in 
a  year,  it  is  very  cruel,  very  callous  to  the  sufferings  of 
men's  souls  and  bodies.  Besides,  journalism  is  an  over- 
crowded profession.  There  is  not  a  vacancy  in  any  of- 
fice that  I  know." 

"I  suppose  not,"  said  Frank  quietly ;  "but  Fleet  Street 
is  not  my  goal.  I  would  rather  keep  my  liberty  and  be 
my  own  master." 

I  think  I  was  rather  angry  and  brutal  with  him.  The 
calm  assurance  of  the  youth  annoyed  me.  And  his  abso- 
lute ignorance  of  all  the  misery  that  lay  in  front  of  him 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  27 

if  he  overtempted  Providence  in  the  way  he  desired,  gave 
me  a  kind  of  dismay.  I  thought  Frank  was  too  delicate 
a  soul  to  be  bespattered  in  the  squalor  of  Fleet  Street. 
I  pointed  out  to  him  that  the  profession  of  letters  has 
been  invaded  by  the  amateur;  that  every  barrister  with- 
out a  brief,  every  curate  with  a  little  leisure,  every  ele- 
mentary schoolmaster,  every  modern  lady  with  or  without 
a  past,  every  soldier  who  has  fought  through  a  campaign, 
every  man  with  a  long  memory  and  every  boy  with  a 
touch  of  imagination,  is  writing  short  stories,  autobiogra- 
phies or  "special  articles"  for  the  magazines  and  news- 
papers. 

"The  professional  man  of  letters,"  I  said,  "is  becoming 
starved  out.  The  only  people  who  make  money,  with 
a  few  exceptions,  are  novelists  who,  by  some  strange  fluke 
which  cannot  be  accounted  for,  or  worked  out  on  any  sys- 
tem, make  a  big  popular  hit." 

Frank  listened  to  me  with  polite  attention  for  quite  an 
hour,  and  then,  getting  up,  stretched  his  arms  and 
yawned. 

"I  am  sorry  you  take  such  a  gloomy  view  of  things," 
he  said.  "Let's  go  to  bed.  Shall  we?" 

A  month  later  I  received  a  postcard  from  Frank  Lut- 
trell.  It  was  addressed  from  Staple  Inn.  "Come  and 
cheer  me  up  with  some  of  your  pessimism,"  it  said. 

So  the  young  dog  had  come  to  London. 

I  went  round  to  Staple  Inn  the  next  afternoon.  The 
sun  of  a  glorious  autumn  day  was  on  the  front  of  the  old 
wooden  houses  in  Holborn  which  remain  in  the  hideous 
highway  as  a  relic  of  picturesque  London ;  and  in  the  lit- 
tle court  the  leaves  were  brown  on  the  few  trees,  and 
red  where  they  lay  rotting  on  the  ground.  I  climbed  up 
the  narrow  spiral  staircase,  the  walls  of  which  had  been 
rubbed  by  many  shoulders  now  gone  to  dust,  by  many 


2S  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

generations  of  young  barristers,  by  many  poor  devils  who 
have  kept  a  plucky  heart,  or  hidden  a  heavy  one. 

On  the  top  landing  I  saw  a  visiting-card  tacked  on  to  a 
little  old  door.  "Mr.  Frank  Luttrell."  I  gave  a  bang 
on  the  knocker  and  heard  a  long  stride  coming  across 
the  floor  inside.  Then  the  door  opened  and  Luttrell  stood 
grinning  at  me,  his  handsome,  boyish  face  not  so  bronzed 
as  when  I  had  last  seen  him. 

"Tea's  j'tst  ready,"  he  said.     "Mind  your  head!" 

I  ducked  under  the  oak  beam  and  went  inside,  into  a 
small,  low-ceilinged  room  with  wooden  panels,  and  an 
iron-work  lattice  window  looking  on  to  Holborn.  "Very 
pretty,"  I  said.  "Very  quaint.  How  much  does  it  cost 
you?" 

"One  quid  a  week,"  said  Frank,  "with  a  few  extras. 
Expensive,  but  it's  worth  it.  ...  Look  here!" 

He  opened  the  window  and  put  his  head  out.  The 
roar  of  the  traffic  came  up  from  below,  and  standing  by 
Frank's  side  I  looked  down  into  the  street  which  was 
filled  with  the  golden  glamour  of  an  autumn  sunset.  An 
endless  stream  of  omnibuses,  motor-cars,  hansom-cabs, 
and  hurrying  people  went  by  in  a  great  tide  of  traffic,  and 
seen  from  above  through  the  golden  haze  the  moving  pic- 
ture had  a  strange  effect  on  one's  senses. 

"Ah!  That's  the  real  thing,"  said  Frank,  poking  his 
head  in,  with  a  deep  breath.  "I  never  get  tired  of  star- 
ing at  it." 

"I  hope  you  are  able  to  pay  for  it,"  I  said,  looking 
round  the  room  again.  "It's  an  expensive  luxury." 

"I  have  kept  my  end  up  pretty  well,  so  far,"  said 
Frank,  with  an  optimism  in  which  I  detected  a  note  of 
insincerity.  I  found  out  that  he  had  been  there  four 
weeks,  and  that  during  that  time  he  had  had  three  articles 
accepted  which  brought  him  in  six  guineas. 

"That's  one  pound  ten  a  week,"  I  said,  "and  you  pay 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  29 

a  pound  a  week  for  rent.  It's  rather  out  of  proportion, 
isn't  it?  What  about  your  food,  and  washing  and 
clothes?" 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  Frank  jauntily.  "I  brought 
away  a  good  stock  of  clothes  and  thirty  pounds  in  good 
hard  cash." 

"But,  my  dear  good  fool,"  I  cried,  "a  wardrobe  and 
thirty  pounds  won't  last  for  ever.  What  are  you  going 
to  do  afterwards  ?  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?" 

"Have  some  tea,"  said  Frank.     "It's  Lipton's  best." 

I  swallowed  my  wrath  and  some  of  his  tea  which  he 
had  made  with  condensed  milk.  Then  I  pointed  to  the 
photographs  of  his  father  and  mother  on  the  mantel- 
piece. 

"What  do  they  think  of  it?" 

"Oh,  they  take  it  quite  sensibly,"  said  Frank.  "I  have 
been  sending  them  good  accounts  of  myself." 

"Well,  you  must  have  told  them  pretty  stiff  lies,"  I 
said. 

He  flushed  a  little,  and  gave  me  one  of  his  straight 
looks. 

"You  haven't  come  here  to  quarrel,  have  you  ?"  he  said. 

"No,"  I  answered.  Then  I  put  my  hand  on  his  arm. 
"But  I'm  sorry  that  you  have  done  this,  Frank.  You 
have  no  notion  how  sorry  I  am,  I  have  seen  too  many 
tragedies  of  this  kind." 

"Oh,  rot,"  he  said  impatiently,  and  then  begged  my  par- 
don. "I  am  going  to  pick  up  a  living  somehow.  I 
haven't  started  so  badly." 

"Three  articles  in  four  weeks,  Frank!" 

"Well,  I  have  written  heaps  more.  Some  of  them  are 
bound  to  find  a  place." 

He  pointed  to  a  big  card  hanging  from  a  tack  on  the 
wall.  It  was  a  list  of  titles  for  articles,  some  of  them 
ticked  off  in  blue  pencil. 


30  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"I  have  done  a  dozen  of  those,"  he  said,  "and  the  others 
are  in  my  head.  How  do  you  fancy  the  titles?" 

Some  of  them  were  rather  striking  and  good,  but  as  I 
told  him,  the  title  of  an  unwritten  article  was  as  unsub- 
stantial as  the  dream  of  a  good  dinner. 

I  knew  I  was  a  wet  blanket,  and  I  blamed  myself  af- 
terwards for  damping  down  a  boyish  courage  and  enthu- 
siasm which  after  all  were  worth  more  than  any  weary 
wisdom.  Unfortunately  I  was  unable  to  give  him  a  help- 
ing hand,  as  I  was  ordered  off  on  a  special  mission  which 
took  me  away  from  London  for  six  months.  When  I 
came  back  I  called  on  him  again. 

He  was  looking  thinner,  and  I  thought  his  eyes  had  a 
rather  feverish  light  in  them. 

"How  goes  it?"  I  said. 

"Quite  all  right,"  he  answered  jauntily,  and  then  see- 
ing that  I  was  looking  at  him  rather  searchingly,  he  col- 
oured up,  laughed  in  his  low,  nervous  way,  and  said :  "It's 
no  use  lying.  Things  are  pretty  bad.  I  shall  have  to 
clear  out  of  these  rooms.  When  you  came  I  thought  it 
was  the  landlord.  He  has  been  worrying  for  his  rent." 

"Are  you  so  low  as  that  ?"  I  asked. 

He  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket,  and  pulling  out  half-a- 
crown  spun  it  up  in  the  air  and  caught  it  in  the  palm  of 
his  hand. 

"That' s  all  I  have  until  I  can  get  a  cheque  for  an  ar- 
ticle which  was  accepted  a  fortnight  ago  but  is  still  un- 
published." I  whistled. 

"How  about  the  £30?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  that's  gone,"  he  said ;  "I  have  been  living  on  capi- 
tal— and  I  swallowed  up  half  of  it  when  I  put  these  sticks 
in.  I  just  had  enough  left  to  do  the  theatres  and  run 
down  home  for  week-ends." 

"Theatres  and  week-ends  in  the  country !"  I  said,  laugh- 
ing. "Surely  bread-and-butter  comes  first." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  31 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Frank.  He  stared  into  the 
fireplace  where  there  were  only  cold  ashes.  Then,  after 
a  silence,  he  said  gloomily,  "I  find  London  a  hideously 
lonely  place.  At  first  I  was  excited  by  the  noise  and 
sights  of  the  streets.  I  thought  I  should  never  tire  of 
studying  the  faces  in  the  crowds.  Every  face  had  a  story 
to  tell.  I  found  a  comedy  or  a  tragedy  at  every  street 
corner.  But  after  all  you  can't  be  only  a  spectator.  I 
hardly  know  a  soul  in  London.  Across  the  passage  there 
is  a  newly-married  couple,  an  artist  fellow  with  a  Russian 
Jewess  as  pretty  as  Ruth  or  Naomi.  I  can  hear  them 
laughing  and  quarrelling,  and  I  pass  them  on  the  stairs, 
but  I'm  so  stupidly  nervous  I  can't  say  good-morning  to 
them.  Yet  sometimes  I  would  give  a  lot  to  go  and  have 
tea  in  their  room,  to  talk  to  them — to  talk  to  anybody. 
One  gets  so  horribly  tired  of  oneself." 

"My  poor  Frank!"  I  said,  not  with  any  sarcasm  or  un- 
kindness,  I  think.  "And  so  you  spent  your  last  money 
in  flying  away  from  London,  into  the  quiet  country  which 
you  used  to  find  so  dull!" 

He  flushed,  but  lifted  his  head  rather  proudly. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I  don't  regret  having  taken  the  plunge. 
I  would  not  go  back  to  the  Abbey  School  for  all  the 
money  in  the  world." 

"And  yet,"  I  said,  looking  at  the  lonely  half-crown  on 
the  table,  "that  is  all  you  have,  eh?" 

He  laughed,  but  it  was  not  a  cheery  laugh. 

"I  have  this,"  he  said,  pulling  out  a  gold  watch;  "I 
suppose  I  can  get  something  for  it,  although  I  have  put 
off  realising  it  as  far  as  possible — it  belonged  to  my  old 
governor." 

"Put  that  in  your  pocket,"  I  said  rather  roughly,  "I 
am  not  such  a  mean  skunk,  I  hope." 

However,  when  I  offered  to  lend  him  a  little  money 
he  turned  very  red  and  said  "Damn !"  and  wouldn't  touch 


32  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

it,  and  then  to  my  dismay  went  quite  faint,  so  that  I  had 
to  hold  him. 

"Good  lord !  man,"  I  said.  "What's  the  matter  ?  If  a 
friend  can't  lend  another " 

"It's  not  that,"  he  said,  wiping  off  the  cold  sweat  from 
his  forehead.  "I  have  been  sucking  an  empty  pipe  on  an 
empty  stomach — sometimes  it  makes  one  forget  dinner- 
time." 

He  begged  my  pardon  a  dozen  times  for  making  such 
a  weak  fool  of  himself,  and  was  exceedingly  distressed 
at  having  revealed  himself  in  this  way.  But  I  was  more 
distressed  at  the  conditions  into  which  he  had  fallen,  and 
I  took  him  off  then  and  there  to  a  cosy  little  restaurant 
in  Soho  where  we  had  a  good  dinner  and  a  bottle  of  wine, 
which  made  the  world  seem  more  rosy. 

Over  our  cigarettes  I  asked  him  what  I  could  do  to 
give  him  a  leg-up. 

He  crumbled  his  bread  nervously,  and  then  in  a  hesi- 
tating way  said,  "Look  here,  old  chap,  don't  you  think 
you  could  get  a  place  for  me  in  Fleet  Street.  I  am  not 
such  a  soft  thing  as  you  imagine.  I  believe  I  could  shape 
into  a  journalist." 

"You  have  had  no  experience,"  I  said.  "That's  the 
devil  of  it.  London  pressmen  have  generally  been  to 
school  on  provincial  papers." 

I  saw  that  my  answer  had  plunged  him  into  gloom 
again. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "I  am  a  useless  creature.  I  sup- 
pose I  shall  be  among  the  failures  of  life.  Probably  I 
shall  drift  into  a  city  clerkship." 

I  thought  things  over,  and  then  it  struck  me  that  Silas 
Bellamy  might  stretch  a  point  in  his  favour.  Bellamy 
was  a  generous-hearted  little  man  with  a  gift  of  humour 
and  with  a  warm  corner  in  his  heart  for  young  men. 

That  evening  I  took  Frank  Luttrell  to  my  club  and 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  33 

wrote  a  letter  of  introduction  for  him.  The  result  of  his 
interview  has  been  described  already.  Frank  came  to  me 
a  day  or  two  later  excited  and  full  of  gratitude,  laughing 
but  with  something  like  a  sob  in  his  throat.  "Four 
pound  ten  a  week !"  he  said.  "I  shall  do  like  a  duke  on 
that."  Then  he  gave  me  the  details  of  his  interview  with 
a  real  sense  of  humour. 


CHAPTER  III 

\ 
FRANK  LUTTRELL  began  the  first  day  of  his  new  career 

like  a  shipwrecked  mariner  who  had  floated  ashore  at  the 
last  gasp.  Relieved  of  the  haunting  anxiety  of  keeping 
body  and  soul  together  by  writing  imaginative  essays 
which  were  rejected  four  times  out  of  five,  and  with  a 
regular  salary  on  a  great  London  newspaper,  it  seemed 
to  him  that  he  had  reached  a  land  of  promise.  Yet  in 
spite  of  his  soaring  spirit  he  could  not  overcome  a  feel- 
ing of  intense  nervousness  and  excitement.  He  came  as 
a  stranger  to  Fleet  Street,  ignorant  of  the  technicalities  of 
journalism  and  of  social  etiquette  and  customs  of  news- 
paper life.  Always  diffident  in  the  company  of  his  fel- 
low-creatures, yet  boyishly  anxious  to  make  a  good  im- 
pression, he  looked  forward  not  without  a  flutter  at  the 
heart  to  his  first  plunge  into  a  new  and  strange  society. 

He  was  disconcerted  a  little  at  the  outset.  Passing 
through  the  swing  doors  of  the  office  with  a  quick  step, 

he  went  upstairs  and  said:  "Good-morning "  to  the 

man  named  Leach  who  sat  at  the  desk  on  the  landing 
with  the  six  messenger  boys  who  were  again  eating  toffee 
and  again  reading  small  books  with  flaming  covers.  He 
was  about  to  go  down  the  corridor  to  find  his  way  to  the 
reporters'  room  when  the  man  sprang  up  and  interrupted 
him  in  an  aggressive  way. 

"No,"  he  said,  "excuse  me!  Not  even  a  Harchangel 
goes  by  'ere  without  the  Heditor's  consent.  Kindly  fill 
up  a  form  signifying  name  and  business,  if  you  please." 

"It's  all  right,  my  good  fellow,"  said  Luttrell,  inclined 
to  be  angry.  "I'm  on  the  staff." 

34 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  35 

"Oh,  are  you?"  said  Leach,  as  though  he  had  his 
doubts.  "  *Ow  am  I  to  know  that,  I  wonder  ?" 

"Because  I  tell  you  so,"  said  Luttrell,  with  a  touch  of 
his  Oxford  manner. 

"Oh,  well,  of  course,"  said  the  man,  changing  his  tone. 
"I'm  bound  to  take  your  word  for  it."  He  seemed  to 
have  a  grievance.  "The  Chief  should  have  let  me  know. 
'Ow  am  I  to  do  my  dooty  to  this  office  if  I  am  confronted 
by  strange  gentlemen  what  may  have  no  more  right  than 
the  devil  to  get  inside  these  premises.  I  ask  you,  is  it 
reasonable  ?" 

"May  I  venture  to  ask  who  you  are?"  said  Luttrell, 
smiling,  in  spite  of  his  annoyance  at  this  peculiar  Cock- 
ney person  who  seemed  to  think  that  he  had  a  position 
of  great  authority.  The  man  turned  to  one  of  the  boys. 

"Jenkins,"  he  said,  "tell  the  gentleman  who  I  am." 

The  boy  grinned.  "Serjeant  Leach,  sir,  V.  C.,  clerk  - 
in-charge." 

"I'm  pleased  to  meet  you,  Serjeant  Leach,"  said  Lut- 
trell, holding  out  his  hand.  He  was  determined  not  to 
make  an  enemy  at  the  outset  whoever  he  might  be. 

"All  on  my  side,"  said  Leach,  with  magnanimity,  shak- 
ing his  hand.  "As  you  may  not  be  aware,  sir,  the  clerk- 
in-charge  is  a  responsible  orgin  in  a  newspaper  office, 
being  entrusted  with  many  secrets,  both  private  and  con- 
fidential, which  are  not  to  be  betrayed  for  gold,  nor  even 
for  the  price  of  a  drink  in  'ot  weather.  Modesty  for- 
bids me  to  enumerate  my  other  duties  which  range  from 
the  temporary  haccommodation  of  gentlemen  who  anti- 
cipate their  weekly  wage  to  the  more  'eroic  task  of  sum- 
moning up  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep  after  the  club  is 
closed."  Luttrell  was  conscious  that  he  had  come  in  con- 
tact with  a  humourist,  and  he  made  the  immediate  reso- 
lution to  avoid  him  strenuously.  The  man's  familiarity 
was  somewhat  galling  to  his  sense  of  dignity. 


36  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"You  certainly  have  a  great  variety  of  duties,"  he  said. 
"Where  shall  I  find  the  reporters'  room?" 

"You  can  smell  it,"  said  Serjeant  Leach.  "Most  of  the 
young  gentlemen  in'jale  them  threepenny  packets  of 
poison-sticks.  A  'orrible  'abit,  I  call  it.  'Smoke  a  good 
honest  pipe  and  thou  shalt  stand  before  Kings/  as 
Shakespeare  said.  First  room  on  the  left." 

"Thanks,"    said   Luttrell. 

He  went  down  the  passage  and  stood  for  a  moment 
outside  the  door  pointed  out  to  him.  He  could  hear  the 
sound  of  voices  and  a  girl's  laugh.  For  a  moment  his 
heart  beat  rather  quickly.  He  drew  a  deep  breath.  Then 
he  opened  the  door  and  went  in — crossing  the  threshold 
of  a  new  life. 

It  was  a  large  room  with  a  number  of  desks  divided  by 
glass  partitions,  and  with  a  large  table  in  the  centre.  At 
the  far  end  of  the  room  was  a  fire  burning  brightly  in  the 
grate  and  in  front  of  it  were  two  men  and  a  girl,  the  men 
in  swing  chairs  with  their  legs  stretched  out,  the  girl  on 
the  floor  in  the  billows  of  a  black  silk  skirt,  arranging 
chestnuts  on  the  first  bar  of  the  grate. 

Luttrell  recognised  the  group.  One  was  the  excessively 
tall  young  man  with  the  pale  gold  hair,  the  handsome 
white  face,  and  the  tired,  lack-lustre  eyes.  Mr. 
Christopher  Codrington,  he  had  been  called,  if  Luttrell's 
memory  did  not  err.  The  girl  was  one  whose  laughter 
he  had  heard  in  Bellamy's  room  and  who  was  going  to 
the  Gala  night  at  the  Opera.  And  he  recognised  the 
dapper  man  with  the  black  moustache  and  the  whimsical 
face  who  had  been  telling  a  funny  story  up  and  down  the 
passage. 

"My  dear  girl,"  said  the  tall  young  man,  "why  will  you 
risk  soiling  those  little  white  hands  of  yours  by  such  dirty 
work  ?  Surely  the  mere  animal  pleasure  of  eating  chest- 
nuts  " 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  37 

The  girl  seized  a  roasted  chestnut  which  popped  out  of 
the  fire,  and  stripping  it  of  its  skin  gave  it  to  the  little 
man  with  the  black  moustache. 

"It  makes  my  mouth  water,"  she  said,  "but  I  some- 
times try  to  exercise  self-restraint.  .  .  .  Oh,  eat  it 
quickly,  Mr.  Quin,  or  I  shall  take  it  back !" 

Then  she  clasped  her  hands  round  one  of  her  knees  and 
looked  at  the  tall  young  man  with  a  flush  on  her  face  that 
may  have  been  caused  by  the  fire. 

"I  wonder  if  you  have  ever  made  your  hands  dirty, 
Mr.  Christopher  Codrington  ?"  she  said,  with  her  head  a 
little  on  one  side,  looking  at  him  with  an  air  of  serious  in- 
quiry. 

"I  always  try  to  keep  them  clean,"  said  Codrington, 
studying  his  manicured  nails  with  satisfaction.  "Have 
you  any  objection?" 

"I  dislike  men  to  be  always  clean,"  said  the  girl,  whose 
name  Luttrell  afterwards  learnt  to  be  Katherine  Hal- 
stead.  "It  is  a  sign  of  decadence." 

The  tall  young  man  opened  his  bluish-grey  eyes  with 
surprise.  "I  protest,"  he  said.  "Quin,  I  appeal  to  you. 
Do  you  discern  any  sign  of  decadence  in  me?" 

"Yes,"  said  Quin;  "you  are  damnably  decadent  all  over, 
from  your  golden  hair  to  your  effeminate  feet." 

Codrington  rose  to  his  great  height  and  putting  his 
thumbs  into  his  armholes  assumed  a  parliamentary  air 
and  attitude.  "I  must  ask  the  honourable  member  to 
withdraw  her  offensive  statement,"  he  said  severely. 

"I  will  withdraw  it,"  said  Miss  Katherine,  munching  a 
chestnut,  "if  you  can  swear  to  me  that  you  have  ever 
blacked  your  own  boots." 

"I  will  swear,"  said  Codrington  solemnly,  "that  I  once 
blacked  a  man's  eye.  It  was  on  behalf  of  a  lady  in  dis- 
tress, who  afterwards  scratched  my  face  for  interfering." 


38  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

The  girl  laughed,  and  threw  one  of  her  roasted  chest- 
nuts at  him,  which  he  just  dodged  in  time. 

"Bravo !"  cried  Quin.  "Though  we  disbelieve  the  fact, 
it  is  a  pretty  tale." 

Then  suddenly  all  three  of  them  saw  Frank  Luttrell, 
who  was  standing  by  the  door. 

"I  spy  strangers/'  said  Mr.  Quin,  in  a  low  voice. 

The  girl  rose  from  the  floor  with  a  momentary  sign  of 
confusion,  and  Codrington,  in  his  suave,  polished  way, 
said,  "Are  you  looking  for  anybody,  sir  ?" 

Luttrell  stepped  forward  blushing  like  a  school-boy  dis- 
covered with  a  crib.  "I  am  sorry  to  intrude,"  he  said 
nervously,  "but  the  fact  is — er — I  am  on  the  staff.  My 
name's  Frank  Luttrell." 

"Oh!"  said  all  of  them  simultaneously. 

Mr.  Quin  laughed  and  said:  "That  was  pretty  good 
for  an  unrehearsed  chorus !  .  .  .  Glad  to  make  your  ac- 
quaintance, Mr.  Luttrell.  Join  us,  won't  you,  and  share 
the  merry  chestnuts  ?  You  have  no  idea  what  a  quantity 
we  get  through  in  this  office.  Many  of  them  find  their 
way  into  the  Rag.  Our  friend  Codrington  there  is  a  great 
merchant  of  them." 

Frank  Luttrell  was  looking  towards  the  girl,  and  their 
eyes  met  and  lingered  in  each  other  for  a  moment.  He 
thought  she  looked  more  attractive  to-day  than  on  the  first 
night  he  had  seen  her.  The  fire  had  touched  her  cheeks, 
and  the  rather  pretty  confusion  with  which  she  sprang 
from  the  floor,  concealing  the  roasting  chestnuts  with  her 
skirts,  struck  his  imagination  as  an  attitude  which  would 
have  been  delightful  to  a  French  impressionist.  She 
dropped  her  eyes  with  a  slight  movement  and  a  little 
laugh.  "Yes,  do.  .  .  .  They  are  done  to  a  turn  .  .  .  and 
there  is  an  empty  chair  there." 

"Thanks,"  said  Luttrell,  "if  I  am  not  really  intruding." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  39 

"Intruding,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  Quin ;  "you  are  one 
of  us,  aren't  you?" 

Luttrell  took  the  vacant  chair,  and  the  girl  put  a  thing 
like  a  cinder  into  his  hands. 

"There's  a  beauty  for  you !"  she  said. 

Luttrell  still  felt  a  little  embarrassed.  The  girl  was 
kneeling  on  the  floor  again  and  the  tips  of  her  fingers 
touched  his  hand  for  a  moment  as  she  gave  him  the 
charred  nut.  It  seemed  good  to  him  that  in  a  moment 
he  should  have  got  on  to  the  fireside  as  it  were  of  journal- 
istic life,  that  the  pretty  girl  by  his  side  should  treat  him 
with  friendly  familiarity,  and  that  Quin  should  call  him 
"one  of  us."  Frank  had  lived  some  months  in  loneliness, 
and  this  sudden  warmth  of  companionship  melted  him. 

Christopher  Codrington's  pale  eyes  were  studying  Lut- 
trell's  clothes.  They  were  of  Harris  tweed  and  well  cut 
though  somewhat  the  worse  for  wear,  but  Luttrell  no- 
ticed the  fixed  gaze  upon  him  and  shifted  his  position  to 
hide  the  frayed  edges  of  his  trousers,  a  movement  that 
did  not  escape  Codrington,  whose  lips  curled  with  the 
faint  flicker  of  a  smile. 

"Are  you  on  the  news  side  of  the  Rag?"  said  Codring- 
ton. 

"Yes,"  said  Frank.  "At  least  I  suppose  so,  I  am  rather 
ignorant  of  the  organisation  of  a  newspaper  as  I  have 
never  been  on  one  before." 

"Marry  come  up!"  said  Codrington,  lifting  his  light 
gold  eyebrows.  "You  amaze  me.  Is  it  too  late  for  you 
to  draw  back?" 

"Draw  back,"  said' Luttrell.    "Why?" 

"My  dear  fellow !"  said  Codrington  solemnly ;  "there  is 
a  dreadful  text  over  this  doorway :  'Abandon  hope,  all  ye 
who  enter  here.'  Please,  please,  if  you  have  a  mother 
who  loves  you,  if  you  have  a  kind,  forgiving  father,  go 
back  to  that  happy  home  ere  it  is  yet  too  late." 


40  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Don't  pay  any  attention  to  him,  Mr.  Luttrell,"  said 
the  girl.  "Because  he  is  making  a  wreck  of  his  own 
career,  he  imagines  that  no  one  is  strong  enough  to  sur- 
vive the  ordeals  of  journalism." 

"Miss  Katherine,"  said  Codrington,  raising  his  long 
white  hand  in  protest,  "do  not  be  so  cruel  in  your  can- 
dour." 

Quin,  the  little  man  with  the  black  moustache,  broke  out 
into  song,  in  a  rather  pleasant  baritone — 

"Be  she  mee-ker,  kind-er  than 
Turtle  dove  or  peli-can, 
If  she  be  not  so  to  me 
What  care  I  how  kind  she  bef" 

There  was  the  tinkle  of  a  telephone  bell. 

"Hello !  Hello !  Yes,  Mr.  Quin  is  here.  At  your  serv- 
ice, Mr.  Vicary,  sir.  .  .  .  Get  a  special  interview  with 
Maudie  Merivale  about  the  rumour  of  her  marriage  with 
Lord  Mersham?  Certainly  .  .  .  nothing  easier.  And  a 
portrait?  Oh  yes,  dozens.  In  every  kind  of  costume, 
and  otherwise." 

He  put  down  the  receiver  and  said  "Damn"  softly. 

"The  Press  has  become  nothing  but  an  advertising 
agency  for  chorus  girls/'  he  said. 

"Maudie  Merivale?"  said  Codrington,  sitting  up. 
"What,  has  she  done  it  too?  I  used  to  know  her  when 
she  did  the  splits  at  the  Britannia.  A  saucy  little  thing 
who  was  born  in  a  travelling  circus,  and  learnt  her  first 
tricks  on  Epsom  Downs." 

"Oh  yes,  you  know  her,  of  course,"  said  Quin.  "No 
doubt  she  will  invite  you  to  tea  when  she  gives  her  first 
At-Home  at  Mersham  Castle." 

"It's  not  the  first  time  I  have  had  tea  with  her,"  said 
Codrington,  stroking  his  chin. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Katherine  Halstead  severely;  "we 
don't  want  any  more  revelations  of  your  private  life." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  41 

Quin  lifted  his  hat  to  the  girl  with  exaggerated  grace. 
"Fair  lady,"  he  said,  "my  heart  is  sad  at  this  parting. 
Perchance,  however,  we  shall  meet  again." 

He  lifted  up  the  tails  of  his  black  coat  and  pirouetted 
like  a  premiere  danseiwe  to  the  door,  kissing  his  hand,  as 
he  poised  on  one  toe,  before  disappearing. 

Luttrell  laughed. 

"What  part  does  Mr.  Quin  play  in  this  world's  stage?" 
he  asked. 

"Dramatic  critic  and  theatrical  gossip-monger,"  said 
Codrington.  "He  has  seen  every  play  for  the  last  fifteen 
years,  knows  every  actor  in  the  country,  and  hates  the 
profession  like  poison.  I  think  that  is  very  wrong  of 
him." 

"He  is  one  of  the  dearest  and  best,"  said  Katherine 
Halstead.  "Quite  the  favourite,  I  hear,  with  all  the  bar- 
maids in  the  West  End.  I  think  Mr.  Codrington  is  envi- 
ous of  him.  There  seems  to  be  an  irresistible  fascination 
about  barmaids." 

Codrington  looked  at  the  girl  with  his  pale  eyes,  in 
which  there  was  a  curious  smile. 

"I  wonder!"  he  said,  "I  wonder!" 

There  was  another  tinkle  at  the  telephone-bell  which 
Codrington  answered  leisurely. 

"Are  you  there?  .  .  .  yes,  this  is  he.    The  Duchess  of 
Porchester's  Charity  Bazaar?     Opens  at  twelve?     Not 
more  than  two  sticks  ?    Oh,  that  is  hardly  enough,  surely  ? 
.  .  .  Certainly,  Mr.  Vicary.    Oh  no,  the  dear  duchess  is 
always  very  kind.    What !  Ha !  ha !    Naughty !  naughty !" 
He  hung  up  the  telephone  and  laughed  quietly. 
"What  a  man!  .  .  .  What  a  life!" 
He  bent  over  Katherine,  who  had  gone  to  one  of  the 
desks  and  was  tearing  up  strips  of  paper  and  throwing 
them  into  a  little  wicker  basket. 

"Are  you  busy  to-day  ?"  he  said  in  a  low  voice. 


42  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Very  busy,"  she  answered. 

"You  are  vexed  with  me.  You  have  been  very  cruel 
for  quite  a  week.  What  have  I  done?" 

She  got  up  quickly,  shrugging  her  shoulders,  and  went 
over  to  the  telephone,  asking  for  a  number. 

Codrington  looked  at  her  with  an  exaggerated  air  of 
melancholy,  heaved  a  long-drawn  sigh,  and  then,  with  a 
quiet  "Good-morning"  to  Luttrell,  went  out  of  the  room. 

Katherine  was  calling  down  the  telephone — 

"Is  that  the  W.F.L.  ?  ...  Oh  yes.  What  time  do  you 
begin  operations  to-night?  Seven  o'clock.  Oh  thanks. 
A  hot  time,  eh?  Well  done!  I  shall  be  there.  Well, 
good  luck  and  good-bye." 

Luttrell  was  left  alone  with  the  girl,  and  he  crossed  the 
room  and  took  a  seat  at  one  of  the  vacant  desks.  He  felt 
that  he  ought  to  go  upstairs  and  report  himself  to  his 
news-editor,  but  he  was  seized  with  an  absurd  kind  of 
shyness  and  could  not  muster  up  courage  to  face  that  big 
man  with  the  big  eyes  to  whom  Bellamy  had  introduced 
him  a  few  nights  ago. 

He  glanced  towards  the  girl  and  saw  that  she  was  look- 
ing at  him. 

"I  shouldn't  take  that  chair  if  I  were  you,"  she  said. 

"No,"  said  Luttrell,  getting  up  rather  hurriedly.  "Why 
not?" 

"It's  a  dead  man's  chair.  I  don't  know  whether  you  are 
superstitious  about  those  things ;  I  am." 

"Perhaps  it  is  rather  an  ill-omen,"  said  Luttrell.  "Who 
was  he?" 

"It  was  young  Frampton  ...  an  awfully  nice  boy.  He 
was  not  strong  enough  for  this  kind  of  life.  He  got  wet 
through  at  a  shipwreck  on  the  Cornish  coast,  where  he 
was  sent  off  suddenly  one  evening  without  his  dinner  and 
without  his  overcoat.  I  called  it  murder.  The  others 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  43 

call  it  martyrdom.    The  name  doesn't  count  much.    The 
poor  boy's  dead,  anyhow." 

"But  if  you  san  stand  this  life,  surely  a  man  can,"  said 
Luttrell. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  girl.  "It's  a  question  of 
luck,  I  suppose,  and  the  men  get  the  roughest  time." 

"I  am  glad  of  that,"  said  Luttrell  earnestly.  "Awfully 
glad." 

Katherine  Halstead  laughed  as  she  put  on  a  white  fur 
hat  and  boa,  in  which  she  seemed  pretty  and  dainty  to 
Luttrell's  eyes,  which  lingered  on  her. 

"That's  nice  of  you.  Still,  we  women  wear  out  sooner. 
Five  years  in  Fleet  Street  withers  any  girl.  Then  she  gets 
crows  feet  round  her  eyes  and  becomes  snappy  and  fretful 
or  a  fierce  creature  struggling  in  an  unequal  combat  with 
men.  I  am  just  reaching  that  stage." 

"Oh  no,"  said  Luttrell  eagerly.  "I  am  quite  sure  that 
you  are  not." 

"I  think  I  know  best  about  that."  Katherine  Halstead 
smiled  at  him  and  then  looked  at  him  rather  curiously. 

"You  are  quite  new  to  Fleet  Street,  aren't  you  ?"     - 

"Yes,"  said  Luttrell ;  "I  have  only  been  a  few  months  in 
London,  and  then  I  lived  alone  in  lodgings.  I  am  an 
awful  greenhorn.  Before  that  I  taught  in  a  country 
school." 

"I  thought  you  came  from  the  country,"  said  the  girl, 
getting  some  papers  together  and  putting  them  into  a 
handbag.  "You  have  got  green  fields  in  your  eyes.  I 
should  think  you  write  fairy-tales,  don't  you,  and  make 
them  all  end  happily  ever  after?" 

"You  mean  to  say  that  I  am  very  young,"  said  Frank, 
colouring  up. 

"I  should  say  you  are  not  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  old 
like  most  of  us  here,"  said  Miss  Halstead,  buttoning  up 
a  long  glove,  but  giving  him  a  swift  little  glance  in  which 


44  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

there  was  a  glint  of  mischief.  "You  have  no  idea  what 
old  men  and  women  there  are  in  Fleet  Street.  They  have 
worn  out  all  emotion.  They  have  seen  everything  there 
is  to  see  and  learnt  everything  there  is  to  know,  and  they 
find  life,  oh,  such  a  stale  kind  of  game !  We  are  all  cynics 
here." 

"You  don't  look  like  one,"  said  Frank.  He  thought  she 
looked  like  a  wood-nymph  who  had  strayed  into  Fleet 
Street. 

"Oh  I,"  said  the  girl,  "I  haven't  an  illusion  left."  She 
thrust  out  her  arm  to  him. 

"Could  you  do  up  that  button?"  she  said.  "The  little 
beast  won't  poke  his  head  into  the  right  place !" 

Luttrell  said :  "Oh,  allow  me !"  and  fumbled  over  the 
glove. 

"I  say !"  he  said,  "this  is  a  teaser !  Do  you  mind  if  I 
get  round  a  bit?" 

He  got  the  button  sideways  and  prayed  silently  that 
it  would  not  resist  his  desperate  efforts.  Then  he  looked 
up  with  a  flushed  face. 

"You  are  laughing  at  me!" 

"You  have  not  been  blessed  with  sisters,"  she  said. 
"Now,  how  did  you  guess  that  ?"  he  said,  astonished  at 
such  intuitive  knowledge,  and  again  getting  a  grip  on  the 
button. 

"Well,  it  is  evident  you  haven't  had  much  practice." 
"Oh,  by  Jove,  no,  I  am  a  clumsy  idiot.  .  .  .  Perhaps 
you  will  let  me  get  a  bit  of  practice  now  and  again.    I'd 
love  to.  ...  Look,  it's  done !" 

"Wonderful !"  cried  Katherine.  "I  really  never  thought 
you  would  do  it." 

"It  was  a  thrilling  moment  when  the  little  beggar  went 
home,"  said  Luttrell,  staring  at  the  button  as  if  it  were 
some  amiable  insect. 

Their  eyes  met  and  they  both  laughed. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  45 

•'Thanks  so  much,"  said  the  girl,  and  before  he  could 
say  another  word  she  darted  out  of  the  room. 

Frank  Luttrell  sighed  when  she  had  gone.  The  room 
felt  very  lonely  without  her.  But  he  was  not  left  alone 
for  long.  Four  or  five  men  came  into  the  room  in  a  group 
laughing  and  talking  noisily.  They  stared  for  a  moment 
at  the  tall,  boyish  stranger  who  was  turning  over  a  file 
of  the  newspapers,  but  took  no  further  notice  of  him,  and 
stood  round  the  fireplace  discussing  the  incidents  of  some 
banquet  of  the  preceding  evening. 

"Did  you  see  the  acrobatic  performance  of  Little 
Jemmy  and  Sweet  William?"  said  a  squarely-built,  old- 
ish-young man,  with  a  powerful,  clean-shaven  face  and 
hair  curiously  streaked  with  white.  "It  was  the  funniest 
thing  on  earth.  They  were  arm-in-arm  at  the  top  of  the 
grand  staircase,  swearing  eternal  friendship.  Suddenly 
Jemmy  lurched  forward  and  down  they  both  went,  slid- 
ing the  whole  flight  of  stairs  and — on  my  word  of  hon- 
our— coming  up  at  the  bottom — still  arm-in-arm,  and  very 
much  surprised  at  their  own  success!  The  head-waiter 
said  he  had  never  seen  anything  so  neat  in  his  life." 

There  was  a  roar  of  laughter,  and  the  oldish-young  man 
said :  "Well,  I  must  be  off  to  the  Old  Bailey.  That  mur- 
der trial  finishes  to-day."  As  he  passed  the  telephone 
bell  rang  and  he  answered  it. 

"Frank  Luttrell?  Who's  he?"  He  turned  round  and 
said,  "Is  there  a  fellow  named  Luttrell  here?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank. 

The  man  at  the  telephone  stared  at  him  for  a  moment 
with  extraordinarily  keen  cold  eyes. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "Vicary  wants  you  upstairs."  Luttrell 
went  up,  and,  asking  the  way  to  the  news-editor's  room 
from  a  messenger  boy,  was  shown  into  a  big  room  where 
Vicary  sat  at  a  desk  looking  at  a  number  of  photographs 
which  were  being  handed  to  him  by  a  man  with  a  bowler 


46  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

hat.  At  his  side  was  a  secretary  arranging  newspaper 
cuttings. 

"Good  lord !"  said  Vicary,  "what's  the  good  of  bringing 
me  pictures  twenty- four  hours  old  ?  Take  'em  away." 

He  thrust  the  pile  of  photographs  at  the  man  with  the 
bowler  hat,  who  took  them  with  a  crestfallen  air  and  with- 
out a  word  stepped  out  of  the  room. 

"Jones,"  said  Vicary,  turning  to  the  secretary.  "Send 
a  wire  to  the  town-clerk  of  Leeds  asking  him  to  reserve 
a  seat  for  the  Bennett  trial.  .  .  .  Oh,  morning,  Luttrell. 
Happy  with  yourself?  .  .  .  Jones,  this  is  Mr.  Luttrell, 
now  on  the  staff.  Mr.  Luttrell,  Mr.  Jones.  .  .  .  Perhaps 
you  will  explain  to  him,  Jones,  that  this  is  an  office  where 
men  are  required  to  work  early  and  late,  morning  and 
night,  week-days  and  Sundays,  Boxing  days  and  Christ- 
mas days,  for  better  or  worse  till  death  us  do  part.  .  .  . 
What  are  you  going  to  do  for  us  to-day,  Mr.  Luttrell? 
Oh  yes,  that  murder  at  Bermondsey  .  .  .  see  it  in  the 
Star?  .  .  .  Nose  round,  won't  you?  there  may  be  some- 
thing in  it.  See  me  at  six  o'clock  to-night.  .  .  .  Thanks. 
Morning.  .  .  .  Jones,  remind  me  about  that  engagement 
at  ten  to-morrow." 

Luttrell  hesitated,  became  rather  red  in  the  face,  and 
then,  seeing  that  Vicary  ignored  his  presence  and  was 
giving  his  attention  to  other  matters,  slipped  out  of  the 
room.  On  the  landing  he  gasped,  and  said  in  a  low  voice 
to  himself:  "Murder,  Bermondsey,  see  it  in  the  Star. 
Nose  it  out.  .  .  .  What  on  earth  does  he  mean  ?  What 
the  dickens  am  I  to  do  ?" 


CHAPTER   IV 

FRANK  went  downstairs  and  found  the  reporters'  room 
deserted.  Then  he  went  out  into  Fleet  Street  and  bought 
a  copy  of  the  Star,  where  he  found  a  three-line  paragraph 
stating  that  a  girl  had  been  murdered  in  her  bed  at  Ber- 
mondsey.  No  name  or  address  was  given.  Luttrell  had 
no  geographical  knowledge  of  outer  London,  and  it  was 
with  some  humiliation  that  he  inquired  as  to  the  where- 
abouts of  Bermondsey  from  the  policeman  on  point  at 
Ludgate  Hill. 

The  details  of  that  first  day  of  journalism  still  remain 
in  the  memory  of  Frank  Luttrell  as  a  nightmare  with 
some  elements  of  farce.  He  had  not  the  slightest  idea 
how  to  get  into  the  heart  of  a  murder  mystery,  and  he 
suffered  torture  in  his  endeavour  to  overcome  the  natural 
timidity  of  his  character,  in  order  to  proceed  on  some 
scheme  of  criminal  investigation.  At  the  police  station 
he  was  told  curtly  by  the  inspector  that  if  he  asked  no 
questions  he  would  hear  no  lies.  At  a  baker's  shop  he 
bought  threepenny  worth  of  buns,  which  he  did  not  want, 
and  came  out  of  the  shop  without  putting  any  question 
upon  the  subject  of  the  crime  to  the  fat,  floury  man  be- 
hind the  counter.  Seeing  him  lingering  in  a  curious  way, 
the  baker  became  so  obviously  suspicious,  that  Luttrell 
immediately  asked  for  a  currant  loaf.  In  Bermondsey  he 
was  then  confronted  with  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 
his  burden,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  discovered 
the  difficulty  of  getting  rid  of  a  parcel  in  crowded  streets. 
He  offered  the  buns  to  a  little  girl,  but  a  man  came  up  and 
said,  "None  of  that,  or  I'll  bash  you."  Finally,  in  des- 

47 


48  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

peration,  Luttrell  deposited  them  in  an  underground  lava- 
tory, from  which  he  fled  hurriedly  like  a  man  guilty  of  a 
dreadful  crime.  Half-way  through  the  day  the  brilliant 
idea  struck  him  that  he  might  pick  up  some  valuable  news 
in  a  low  public-house  standing  at  the  corner  of  a  side 
street.  He  pushed  open  the  swing  doors  and  found  him- 
self in  a  reeking  taproom  where  a  number  of  evil-looking 
men  were  talking  to  a  fat  woman  with  yellow  hair  who 
stood  behind  the  bar. 

At  the  appearance  of  the  tall,  boyish  stranger  in  the 
tweed  suit  there  was  a  dead  silence  among  the  men,  who 
stared  at  him  with  a  kind  of  sullen  suspicion. 

"What's  yours,  young  man?"  said  the  yellow-haired 
lady,  sharply. 

Luttrell  hesitated.  For  the  moment  he  had  not  the 
slightest  idea  what  to  ask  for.  Then  he  said  in  a  nervous 
way :  "A  glass  of  ale,  if  you  please." 

The  woman  wrenched  at  a  silver  handle  and  passed 
him  a  glass  of  yellow  liquid.  Luttrell  gulped  a  mouthful 
and  found  it  so  inexpressibly  nasty  that  he  had  to  cough 
violently  in  his  handkerchief.  There  was  still  a  dead 
silence  among  the  men,  but  one  of  them  grinned  and 
winked  solemnly  at  the  slovenly  barmaid.  Luttrell  was 
in  a  state  of  abject  confusion.  He  could  not  muster  up 
courage  to  drink  another  drop  of  the  filthy  beer,  and  yet 
he  would  look  a  fool  if  he  were  to  leave  at  once.  He 
attempted  a  conversation  with  the  lady. 

"Fine  day,  is  it  not  ?"  he  asked,  with  what  he  knew  was 
a  futile  attempt  at  gallantry. 

"Not  knowing,  can't  say,"  said  that  lady,  turning  her 
back  on  him  to  fetch  down  a  bottle  labelled  "Old  Tom." 

Luttrell  was  crushed  at  once  and  after  an  awkward 
pause,  said,  "Good-morning,"  and  thrust  his  way  out 
through  the  swing  doors.  As  they  closed  behind  him  he 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  49 

heard  a  loud  guffaw  of  laughter,  which  sent  the  blood 
tingling  to  his  ears. 

"Good  lord,  what  a  fool  I  am !"  he  said.  "What  on 
earth  am  I  to  do  next  ?" 

For  an  hour  or  more  he  wandered  about  the  streets, 
trying  to  remember  some  detective  tales  of  Eugene  Sue 
and  Emile  Gaboriau  which  he  had  read  in  his  youth.  But 
the  criminal  investigators  in  those  stories  always  had 
access  to  the  scene  of  tragedy  and  invariably  picked  up 
clues  which  gave  them  something  to  work  on.  Poor  Lut- 
trell  was  in  Bermondsey — the  squalor  of  the  place  and 
people  dragged  his  spirit  down  into  his  boots — but  nearer 
than  that,  he  could  not  get  to  the  tragedy  which  he  was 
supposed  to  be  "nosing  out."  He  made  one  more  des- 
perate effort,  and,  taking  his  courage  in  both  hands,  spoke 
to  a  seedy-looking  man  who  was  leaning  up  against  a 
blank  wall  at  the  entrance  to  a  court. 

"Do  you  happen  to  know  anything  about  a  murder  in 
this  district  to-day?"  he  said  politely. 

The  man  stared  at  him,  shifted  his  position,  spat  on  the 
ground,  and  wiped  his  mouth  with  the  back  of  his  hand. 

"Swelp  me  bob,"  he  said.    "What  d'yer  tike  me  for?" 

"I  thought  you  might  know  some  details,"  said  Luttrell 
in  a  casual  way,  as  if  murder  might  be  an  everyday  affair 
in  the  neighbourhood. 

The  man  narrowed  his  eyelids  and  his  mouth  hardened 
into  an  ugly  expression. 

"Lor*  bli'  me,"  he  said  hoarsely,  "what  are  yer  gitting 
at  ?  Go  to  'ell,  and  blast  yerself ,  won't  yer  ?  I'm  an  hon- 
est working-man,  out  of  a  bloomin'  job." 

"Oh,  all  right,"  said  Luttrell;  "I'm  sorry  to  have 
troubled  you." 

He  moved  away  and  pretended  to  study  the  paper-cov- 
ered novels  in  a  newsagent's  shop. 


50  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Well!"  he  said  to  himself.  "This  looks  as  if  I  am 
going  to  make  a  bright  kind  of  pressman !" 

He  shrank  from  the  thought  of  going  to  the  office  with- 
out a  single  word  of  information.  Good  Lord,  he  had  not 
even  discovered  the  whereabouts  of  the  murder.  What 
a  hopeless  idiot  he  would  look! 

He  stayed  in  Bermondsey,  getting  into  a  more  des- 
perate state  of  mind  as  the  darkness  crept  into  the  streets 
and  the  shop  windows  flamed  out  with  electric  light. 
He  had  had  nothing  to  eat  but  three  sandwiches.  His 
feet  were  tired  with  walking,  he  was  faint  with  hunger, 
and  a  nervousness  consumed  his  strength  still  more.  At 
last,  after  a  few  more  inquiries  of  an  equally  futile  char- 
acter, he  went  back  to  Fleet  Street  desperately  disheart- 
ened. He  thought  of  his  Spectator  essays,  and  of  the 
nature  studies  in  the  Oxford  Magazine.  "I  have  got 
down  to  the  mud,"  he  said  to  himself,  and  then,  looking 
down  at  his  feet,  saw  that  he  was  literally  bespattered 
with  the  filth  of  the  London  streets  on  a  damp,  slushy 
day. 

He  went  into  his  office,  and  on  the  landing  of  the  sec- 
ond floor  met  Vicary  in  his  shirt-sleeves. 

"Hulloa !"  said  the  news-editor,  stopping  for  a  moment 
in  his  swift  stride  down  the  passage.  "Got  anything? — 
Had  a  good  time  ?" 

"No,"  said  Luttrell,  "I  am  sorry  to  say  I  couldn't  get 
any  particulars — not  any,  to  tell  the  painful  truth." 

Vicary  grinned. 

"Didn't  think  you  would,  my  boy.  I  sent  Burton  out, 
and  he  got  all  the  details  there  are.  Besides,  they're  all 
in  the  late  Star.  Well,  good-night.  See  me  in  the  morn- 
ing." 

He  strode  away  and  Luttrell  went  downstairs  feeling 
silly  with  himself. 

The  reporters'  room,  into  which  he  went  wearily,  had 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  51 

the  stale  odour  of  a  third-class  smoking-carriage.  The 
desks,  divided  by  glass  partitions,  were  no  longer  vacant, 
and  eight  or  nine  young  and  middle-aged  men,  some  of 
whom  he  had  not  seen  before,  were  writing  busily,  the 
floor  around  them  being  littered  with  papers.  One  of 
the  men,  a  sandy-haired  fellow,  had  a  steak  and  chipped 
potatoes  at  his  elbow,  which  he  ate  with  his  left  hand 
while  he  wrote  with  his  right.  Two  or  three  of  the  others 
had  earthenware  teapots  and  thick  cups  and  saucers  in 
front  of  them.  Silence  reigned  in  the  room  except  for  the 
scratching  of  pens,  the  rustle  of  papers,  and  a  sentence  or 
two  jerked  out  from  behind  one  of  the  desks. 

"How  do  you  spell  exaggeration? — two  g's?  Oh,  of 
course.  Thanks." 

"Where  the  devil  is  my  pair  of  scissors? — some  con- 
founded thief " 

"Let's  see,  is  Cholmondeley  in  the  Ministry?" 

"Shut  up!  can't  you?  How  d'you  think  I  can  write 
literature  if  you  keep  asking  insane  questions?" 

The  oldish-young  man  with  the  powerful,  clean-shaven 
face  and  the  hair  streaked  with  white  came  in  quickly, 
tossed  his  bowler  hat  into  a  waste-paper  basket,  took  off 
his  overcoat  and  threw  it  over  a  typewriter.  Then  he 
went  to  the  fire  and  bent  over  to  warm  his  hands. 

One  of  the  other  men  looked  up. 

"What  was  the  verdict,  Brandon  ?" 

"Guilty.  The  jury  were  out  fifteen  minutes.  When 
old  Buckstrom  put  on  the  black  cape  he  went  a  whitish- 
grey  colour  like  a  three-days-old  corpse.  The  girl  held 
out  her  hands  as  though  to  beat  off  some  spectre.  Then 
she  gave  a  blood-curdling  shriek  and  went  down  like  a 
log  in  a  swoon.  It  turned  me  quite  sick.  It  isn't  nice  to 
see  a  pretty  girl  handed  over  to  the  hangman." 

Brandon  got  up  from  the  fire  and  touched  a  bell  knob, 
which  brought  a  messenger  boy  into  the  room. 


52  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Get  me  some  tea,  Tommy,"  he  said,  spinning  a  shilling 
at  him,  "and  toast  well  buttered.  Don't  lick  it  on  the  way 
back." 

Christopher  Codrington  came  in  with  Katherine  Hal- 
stead. 

"Holloa!"  said  Brandon,  "the  children  seem  to  have 
been  in  a  scrimmage !" 

Two  or  three  other  men  looked  up  and  laughed. 

Certainly  Codrington  had  lost  the  immaculate  appear- 
ance which  he  had  presented  in  the  morning.  His  black 
tie  was  up  to  his  ears,  his  high  dog-eared  collar  was  limp 
and  dirty,  the  tall  hat  looked  as  if  it  had  been  carefully 
brushed  the  wrong  way.  His  patent-leather  boots  were 
muddy  and  his  clothes  were  splashed  with  mud  up  to  the 
neck.  Katherine  Halstead,  too,  was  strangely  dishevelled. 
Her  hair  was  all  tousled  under  her  white  fur  toque,  and; 
there  was  a  great  rent  in  her  black  silk  dress. 

Codrington  wore  the  expression  of  a  man  who  has  gone 
to  the  extreme  limit  of  human  suffering,  beyond  which 
nothing  matters. 

"If  there's  any  gentleman  here,"  he  said  in  a  cold,  mel-j 
ancholy  voice,  "I  should  be  grateful  if  he  would  stand  me 
a  whisky-and-soda.  I  have  had  my  pockets  picked." 

Luttrell,  upon  whom  Codrington's  grey-blue  eyes  were 
fixed,  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket  to  feel  for  a  half-crown. 

"May  I  have  the  pleasure  ?"  he  said. 

"You  are  very  good,"  said  Codrington — "and  the  onlyj 
gentleman  here,"  he  added  severely,  with  a  look  of  coldj 
contempt  at  the  other  men,  who  had  not  been  quick  to- 
respond,  and  who  now  looked  up  and  laughed  as  if  ha 
had  made  a  good  joke. 

He  rang  for  a  boy  and  ordered  his  whisky,  directing! 
the  messenger  with  a  graceful  wave  of  the  hand  to  Lut-l 
trell,  for  the  money.  Brandon,  the  young  man  with  the! 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  53 

white  hair,  turned  to  Katherine  Halstead,  who  had  gone 
quietly  to  her  desk  and  was  already  w.riting. 

"What's  the  story?"  he  asked.  "I've  been  in  court  all 
day  and  know  nothing  of  contemporary  history." 

She  turned  round  in  her  swing  chair  and  said:  "If 
you  will  give  me  a  cigarette  I  will  give  you  the  lurid  de- 
tails." 

"Take  'em  all,"  said  Brandon,  handing  her  his  case. 
"There's  been  a  Suffrage  raid  this  afternoon.    Thirty- 
seven  arrests.    Crowd  very  rough.    Chris  Codrington  and 
I  were  in  the  thick  of  it.    The  police  got  several  of  the 
women  by  the  throats — and  used  quite  unnecessary  vio- 
lence.   Of  course  I  shall  not  be  allowed  to  say  so." 
"Certainly  not/'  said  Brandon.    "Anyhow,  I  am  glad 
women  got  it  in  the  neck.     Serve  'em  right.    They 
.sked  for  it." 

"We  all  know,  Brandon,"  said  Codrington,  "that  you 
re  a  consistent  advocate  of  brutality." 

We  all  know,  Codrington,"  said  Brandon,  "that  you 
,re  a  silly  sentimentalist." 

If  there  had  been  a  spark  of  chivalry  in  the  crowd/' 
id  Codrington,  "they  would  have  rescued  those  frail 
romen  from  the  gross  savagery  of  those  fat,  overfed 
ten  who  have  been  allowed  to  terrorise  the  inhabitants 
f  London." 

Brandon  laughed  scornfully. 

Why  didn't  you  rescue  the  fair  ladies  yourself,  O 
:adisdeGaul?" 

I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  should  not  have  escaped  so 
,sily  but  for  Mr.  Codrington's  protection,"  said  Kath- 
ine  Halstead.  Then  seeing  an  ironical  smile  on  Bran- 
ds face,  she  said  with  a  sudden  sign  of  temper,  "Quar- 
on  the  other  side  of  the  hearthrug,  won't  you?  I  have 
my  copy  to  write." 
Frank  Luttrell  went  out  to  get  supper,  meeting  on  the 


54  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

stairs  forty  or  fifty  men  who  were  coming  up  the  staircase 
chewing  the  last  morsels  of  their  last  mouthfuls.  He 
guessed  them  to  be  printers  and  printers'  readers,  a  race 
of  men  quite  unknown  to  him.  He  wondered — and  then 
smiled  at  himself  for  the  strange  idea — what  their  souls 
were  like  under  their  bowler  hats,  and  whether  any  of 
them  had  ever  been  to  Oxford.  One  or  two  of  them 
certainly  had  refined  faces,  and  looked  as  if  they  might 
have  been  gentlemen — who  had  given  up  the  habit  of 
gentility.  He  had  heard  that  printers'  readers  were  some- 
times scholars  who  had  "gone  under."  "Perhaps  I  shall 
come  to  that,  one  of  these  days,"  thought  Frank. 

His  meal  at  a  restaurant  in  Fleet  Street  was  not  a  suc- 
cess. The  meat  was  distinctly  high  and  the  cheese  re- 
minded him  in  an  uncanny  way  of  blackbeetles.  But  a 
strong  cup  of  coffee  put  some  warmth  into  him  and  stead- 
ied his  nerves. 

He  had  done  very  badly  on  the  first  day  of  his  new 
career,  and  the  thought  of  his  adventure  at  Bermondsey 
was  painful  and  humiliating.  But  his  imagination  wasj 
strangely  stirred  by  his  first  glimpses  behind  the  scenes 
of  newspaper  life.  Those  men  in  the  reporters'  room, 
and  the  girl — Katherine  Halstead — seemed  to  him  types 
of  characters  outside  the  range  of  ordinary  social  ex- 
perience. Hardly  a  serious  word  had  escaped  their  lips 
while  he  had  been  listening  to  them.  Yet  some  of  thenJ 
had  been  onlookers  during  the  day  of  the  serious  business; 
of  life.  One  of  them  had  been  a  witness  of  a  dreadful, 
tragedy.  He  had  been  struck  by  Brandon's  order  for  tea] 
and  toast  after  his  description  of  the  girl  condemned  toj 
death.  He  had  been  impressed  strangely  by  the  calmJ 
matter-of-fact  way  in  which  Codrington  and  Katherind 
Halstead  had  sat  down  to  write  their  "copy,"  as  the)l 
called  it,  after  being  buffeted  and  knocked  about  in  a 
street  riot  which  had  led  to  the  violent  arrest  of  thirty-j 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  55 

seven  women.    He  thought  of  his  conversation  with  the 
girl  and  tried  to  puzzle  out  the  key  to  her  character.   She 
seemed  to  have  a  touch  of  coquetry,  yet  she  had  spoken  to 
him  with  an  almost  boyish  candour,  which  he  had  found 
slightly  disconcerting.     She  had  a  sharp  tongue,  yet  she 
was  not  shrewish,  and  there  was  a  pretty  feminine  light 
in  her  eyes.    She  had  the  gift  of  laughter— he  had  heard 
her  first  laugh  on  the  night  of  his  interview  with  Bellamy 
—yet  once  or  twice  there  had  been  a  certain  wistfulness, 
even  a  bitterness,  in  her  voice  and  words  which  had  not 
escaped  his  ears.    She  had  gone  into  the  Suffrage  scrim- 
mage with  as  little  unconcern  as  though  it  were  an  after- 
noon performance  of  a  comic  opera,  and  had  come  back 
with  a  torn  dress  and  dishevelled  hair  without  a  word  of 
complaint.     Evidently   she  was   a  practised  journalist! 
Yet  in  the  morning  she  had  admitted  that  women  soon 
wear  out  in  Fleet  Street.    She  had  called  herself  a  cynic, 
but  she  had  been  very  playful  roasting  chestnuts  over  the 
fire.    Luttrell  thinking  of  these  things  could  not  place  the 
girl  in  his  portrait-gallery  of  feminine  characters,  but  he 
knew  enough  to  put  her  outside  the  class  of  girls  whom 
he  had  met  at  tennis  tournaments  at  King's  Marshwood 
and  taking  tea  with  the  canon. 

Luttrell  was  drawn  back  to  the  newspaper  office  by  a 
fascination  which  he  could  not  resist.  He  wanted  to 
see  more  of  that  human  machinery  which  would  produce 
penny  paper  to  be  thrust  through  his  letter-box  the  next 
morning.  A  few  mornings  ago  that  paper  would  have 
meant  nothing  more  to  him  than  eight  sheets  of  news  on 
subjects  which  as  a  rule  hardly  interested  him.  Now  he 
would  see  in  it  the  result  of  a  great  human  drama,  the 
product  of  many  brains,  many  temperaments,  many  ad- 
ventures, in  Bermondsey  and  elsewhere!  Every  article 
would  be  a  chapter  of  autobiography.  Between  the  lines 
f  the  things  written  he  would  guess  the  things  that  had 


56  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

not  been  written.  Katherine  Halstead  had  said  that  she 
would  not  be  allowed  to  describe  the  unnecessary  violence 
of  the  police,  and  Luttrell  realised  for  the  first  time  that 
the  writers  of  newspapers  see  behind  the  scenes  but  only 
reveal  a  part  of  their  knowledge. 

Luttrell  wandered  about  the  streets  that  evening  with 
whirling  thoughts.  Then  late  at  night  he  could  no  longer 
resist  his  desire  to  go  back  to  the  office  to  see  the  last 
act  of  this  drama  of  Fleet  Street  life. 

Serjeant  Leach,  the  clerk-in-charge,  had  given  way  to 
another  and  younger  man,  and  his  six  messenger  boys 
had  been  relieved  also,  by  boys  with  pale,  pasty  faces  and 
sleepy  eyes.  In  the  reporters'  room  most  of  the  lights  had 
been  turned  out  and  only  one  man  remained — it  was 
Brandon,  the  oldish-young  man  with  the  white  hair — 
who  was  asleep  with  his  arms  on  the  desk  under  an  elec- 
tric lamp.  The  room  was  ankle-deep  in  torn  paper,  and 
smelt  of  stale  tobacco-smoke. 

The  scene  of  activity  was  on  a  higher  floor,  where  a 
number  of  men  were  scurrying  about  with  long  slips  of 
paper.    Most  of  them  went  from  one  big  room  labelled 
"Sub-editors"  to  a  small  room  labelled  "Night-editor." 
Luttrell  looked  into  the  big  room  and  saw  twelve  or  thir- 
teen men  sitting  at  a  long  table.  Each  of  them  held  a  blue 
pencil  with  which  he  slashed  at  sheets  of  flimsy  paper 
before  handing  them  to  a  young  man  with  a  long  nose  and 
greenish  eyes  who  went  round  the  table  collecting  the 
sheets  which  he  then  thrust  into  the  mouthpiece  of  a  brass  ; 
tube.     At  the  head  of  the  table  sat  the  man  with  the  J 
massive  face,  long  grey  hair,  and  tired  eyes  with  black  < 
puffy  bags  underneath  them  who  had  blinked  at  Bellamy's  j 
bayonet  a  few  nights  before  when  he  had  been  threatened 
with  disembowelling.   He  was  sipping  a  glass  of  whisky! 
and  smoking  the  stump-end  of  a  cigar  while  he  gave  in- 1 
structions  to  the  men  around  him. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  57 

In  the  room  marked  "Night-editor"  Luttrell  saw  a 
middle-aged  man  talking  to  a  printer  in  a  white  apron, 
and  afterwards  to  other  men  who  came  quickly  from  the 
larger  room  to  ask  a  question  and  then  return.  There 
was  a  light  burning  in  a  room  to  the  right,  and  through 
the  door  which  was  opened  at  times  Luttrell  had  a  glimpse 
of  an  elderly  man,  writing  hurriedly,  with  disordered 
hair.  Luttrell  guessed  with  a  sudden  inspiration  that  he 
must  be  one  of  the  leader-writers — one  of  that  unknown 
race  of  men  who,  like  kings  and  potentates,  speak  of 
themselves  as  we. 

The  population  of  these  rooms  seemed  to  be  entirely 
different  to  their  inhabitants  by  day.  Yet  one  man  had 
stayed  on.  The  Chief  was  still  there.  As  Luttrell  wan- 
dered about  the  corridors  he  came  quickly  into  the  pas- 
sage. He  was  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  but  still  spruce  and 
clean,  and  with  his  light  brown  hair  well  brushed.  He 
started  when  he  saw  Luttrell. 

"What,  you  here!"  he  said.  "What  the  dickens  are 
you  doing  at  this  hour?" 

Luttrell  was  embarrassed.  He  felt  as  if  he  had  been 
caught  trespassing. 

"I  am  having  a  look  at  things,"  he  said  nervously.  "It 
is  all  rather  strange  to  me." 

Bellamy's  eye  twinkled  at  him. 

"You  are  a  raw  recruit!"  he  said.  "However,  if  you 
want  to  see  things,  come  along." 

He  dashed  on  to  a  lift,  and  Luttrell  followed  him.  They 
went  up  swiftly  and  stopped  with  a  jerk. 

"This  is  the  composing-room,"  said  Bellamy.  "The 
men  don't  like  it  when  I  go  up.  It  hurts  their  feelings." 

He  gave  an  amused  little  chuckle,  and  then  stepped  out 
into  a  big  room  with  a  stone  floor.  A  number  of  men 
in  white  aprons  were  working  almost  silently,  with  quick, 
nervous  fingers,  arranging  type,  putting  thin  brasses  be- 


58  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

tween  lines  of  type  with  extraordinary  deftness,  throwing 
out  bits  of  lead  and  putting  in  other  bits  newly  set,  and 
carrying  columns  to  a  flat  table,  where  they  were  framed 
in  steel  and  screwed  up  tightly.  A  tall  man  stood  among 
them,  giving  directions  in  a  cold,  clear  voice. 

Bellamy  went  up  to  him. 

"You  are  driving  things  late,"  he  said ;  "are  you  going 
to  lose  the  trains  again  ?" 

The  man  turned  on  the  Chief  with  a  flushed  face. 

"Driving  things  late!"  he  said  angrily.  "Whose  fault 
is  it,  I  should  like  to  know?  We  haven't  got  the  first 
leader  yet." 

"Ah!"  said  Bellamy  thoughtfully.  "I  shall  have  to 
wake  up  some  of  my  gentlemen  downstairs.  They're  too 
fond  of  writing  prose  poems." 

The  printing  manager  laughed  ironically. 

"They  wear  their  hair  a  bit  too  long,"  he  said.  Bel- 
lamy beckoned  to  Luttrell  and  stepped  quickly  into  an- 
other room,  where  there  was  a  great  buzzing  noise  as  if 
a  million  bees  were  booming  round  their  queen.  Queer 
processes  were  going  on,  framed  squares  were  being 
beaten  by  hard  brushes ;  paper  moulds  were  placed  in  iron 
boxes,  into  which  molten  lead  was  ladled  from  a  great 
cauldron.  Bellamy  spoke  to  the  overseer,  who  shouted 
in  answer  to  him,  Hit  Luttrell  could  not  hear  what  words 
were  spoken,  as  the  buzzing  noise  in  the  next  room  deaf- 
ened him. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  later  Bellamy  took  him  down  the 
lift  again,  down  to  the  basement  of  the  great  office,  where 
a  row  of  great  machines  stood  in  a  silent  cellar.  A  few 
stalwart  fellows  in  greasy  clothes  were  plunging  oil-cans 
between  wheels  and  rollers  and  wiping  every  bit  of  steel  in 
these  vast  and  complicated  masses  of  machinery  with 
anxious  care.  The  foreman  stood  with  his  watch  in  hisj 
hand  facing  a  hole  in  the  wall.  Bellamy  spoke  to  him! 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  59 

about  the  machines  in  a  technical  language  which  meant 
nothing  to  Luttrell  who  stood  by. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  rattle,  and  a  lift  came  down  the 
hole  in  the  wall. 

"Now  then,  that's  the  last !    Look  slippy,  my  lads !" 

A  great  plate  was  seized  from  the  lift  and  put  on  to  the 
roller.  Two  men  screwed  it  into  position. 

"Let  her  go !"  shouted  the  foreman. 

In  a  moment  the  machine  came  to  life,  with  a  sudden 
and  miraculous  activity.  The  great  roller  went  round, 
steel  rods  plunged  to  and  fro  with  beautiful  rhythm,  a 
frame  rose  and  fell  with  perfect  regularity,  and  at  each 
heart-beat,  as  it  were,  of  those  mighty  organisms  a  batch 
of  complete  newspapers  was  ready  for  the  world. 

"Beauties,  aren't  they?"  shouted  Bellamy  above  the 
clash  and  din.  "They  could  eat  up  a  circulation  sixty 
times  as  large  as  ours.  That's  the  pity  of  it." 

He  took  Luttrell  upstairs  again  and  offered  him  a  glass 
of  whisky.  To  Frank  Luttrell  it  seemed  an  incredible 
thing  to  think  that  this  little  man  in  the  shirt-sleeves  who 
spoke  to  him  without  any  air  of  authority,  who  seemed 
indeed  less  in  authority  than  the  foremen  in  the  printing 
and  machine  rooms,  should  be  the  commander-in-chief 
of  an  army  of  workers,  the  directing  brain  of  all  that 
great  and  complicated  organism. 

This  little  man,  who  certainly,  thought  Luttrell,  must 
have  a  great  and  commanding  intellect  under  his  light 
brown  hair,  lit  a  cigar,  got  into  his  coat  and  overcoat, 
and  tidied  up  his  desk,  all  the  time  telling  the  newest 
member  of  the  staff  a  funny  story  about  a  certain  well- 
known  lady  in  society  who  had  sued  for  a  divorce  that 
day.  Luttrell  did  not  see  the  point  of  the  story,  but 
laughed  with  polite  and  nervous  hilarity. 

"Devilish  droll!  isn't  it?"  said  the  Chief,  turning  off  the 


60  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

electric  light  on  his  desk.  "It  amused  me  a  good  deal, 
when  Quin  told  me  the  yarn." 

He  yawned  loudly,  turned  a  mass  of  papers  off  a  round 
table  on  to  the  floor,  poured  the  dregs  of  his  whisky  into 
the  waste-paper  basket,  put  the  glass  into  a  small  cup- 
board, and  then  left  the  room,  leaving  Luttrell  behind. 

"Good-night,"  he  called  out.  "Go  to  bed,  young  man, 
or  you'll  be  a  wreck  to-morrow." 

"Good-night,  sir,"  said  Luttrell,  following  him  on  to  the 
landing. 

The  Editor  paused  at  the  swing  door  on  the  staircase, 
and  said  with  a  quick  and  not  unkindly  glance  at  Luttrell's 
pale  face: 

"Here,  don't  you  let  Vicary  work  you  too  hard.  .  .  . 
Let  me  know  if  he  gives  you  a  rotten  time." 

Then  he  went  out  running  swiftly  downstairs.  Luttrell 
also  left  the  office  a  few  minutes  later.  It  was  half-past 
one.  Outside  in  the  street  a  number  of  carts  were  drawn 
up  in  front  of  the  building,  and  in  the  large  room  on  the 
ground  floor  open  to  the  street  a  crowd  of  men  and  boys 
stood  at  a  long  table  with  trestles.  Suddenly,  as  Luttrell 
stood  watching  them,  they  pressed  closer  together,  and 
there  was  a  babel  of  tongues.  They  seized  great  parcels 
of  newspapers  shoved  over  the  counters  to  them,  and 
carried  them  to  the  carts  outside.  Those  served  first  were 
first  away.  The  tangle  of  traffic  in  the  narrow  street  was 
noisily  unravelled  and  the  carts  clattered  into  Fleet  Street. 
Then  all  was  silent,  and  down  the  office  steps  came  weary- 
looking  men,  who  called  out  good-night  to  each  other,  and 
went  away  towards  the  trams  on  the  Embankment. 

Luttrell  walked  swiftly  to  his  rooms  at  Staple  Inn.  He 
was  so  tired  physically  that  he  ached  all  over,  but  his  brain 
was  still  active  and  excited.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he 
had  been  behind  the  scenes  of  a  great  and  romantic  drama 
in  which  he  had  met  many  strange  characters,  of  whom 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  6f 

not  the  least  curious  was  that  little  fair-haired  man  who 
told  funny  stories,  polished  his  beautifully  clean  nails, 
smoked  big  cigars,  and  went  about  with  smiling  eyes, 
while  in  some  mysterious  and  unperceived  way  he  guided 
the  policy  and  controlled  the  organisation  of  the  great 
newspaper. 

"Extraordinary!"  said  Luttrell  aloud.  "The  world 
knows  nothing  of  Fleet  Street.  .  .  .  History  day  by  day 
is  written  here,  yet  these  historians  have  never  chronicled 
their  own  romance." 

Then  he  thought  again  of  his  own  adventures  in  Ber- 
mondsey,  and  went  to  his  lonely  rooms  in  a  chastened 
spirit  and  utterly  weary  in  every  limb. 


CHAPTER  V 

A  WEEK  after  Luttrell's  mission  of  criminal  investiga- 
tion in  Bermondsey,  he  sat  in  the  office  of  the  Rag — as 
he  had  already  learnt  to  call  the  great  official  organ  of  the 
Liberal  Party — smoking  a  pipe  and  staring  moodily  at  a 
copy  of  that  morning's  issue.  He  was  alone  in  the  room, 
for  the  crowd  hadn't  yet  come  in,  and  he  suddenly 
crunched  the  paper  in  his  hands  and  said  "My  God !"  in 
a  whisper. 

For  the  past  three  minutes  he  had  been  searching  the 
sheets  for  a  column  headed:  "Clothes  and  the  Man." 
Having  turned  over  the  paper  six  times  without  finding  it, 
he  knew  that  once  again  he  had  made  a  vain  sacrifice 
of  his  manhood  and  self-respect.  On  the  previous  day 
Vicary  had  sent  for  him  and  set  him  that  ludicrous  task. 
"It  isn't  my  idea,"  said  Vicary.  "It's  one  of  the  Chief's 
little  fancies,  and  as  you're  his  protege  you  had  better 
humour  him.  Get  big  representative  opinions  on  the  sub- 
ject— dukes,  young  peers,  Jew  millionaires,  one  or  two 
society  women  would  be  amusing — and,  as  a  last  resource, 
Cyril  Townsend,  who  pretends  to  be  the  best-dressed  man 
in  London,  and  will  talk  as  many  columns  in  his  eagerness 
to  advertise  the  fact  as  any  damn-fool  paper  can  print. 
Thanks.  Now,  run  away,  won't  you,  and  lose  yourself! 
Good-morning.  Very  nice  weather  for  the  time  of  year." 

Vicary  had  given  one  of  his  preposterously  big  winks  to 
his  secretary,  and  Luttrell  had  gone  out  wondering 
whether  he  should  laugh  or  cry  or  satisfy  his  immediate 
temptation  to  take  a  drink.  He  did  none  of  these  things, 
but  with  the  very  laudable  and  somewhat  old-fashioned 

62 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  63 

desire  of  doing  his  duty  and  earning  his  wage  he  set  forth 
to  the  West  End  of  London  after  an  anxious  study  of 
Who's  Who,  to  gather  representative  opinions  on  the  need 
of  new  fashions  in  men's  clothes ! 

According  to  instructions,  Frank  Luttrell  called  on  a 
duke,  that  is  to  say,  he  called  on  the  duke's  flunkey,  who 
was  reading  the  World  in  a  square  hall  before  a  log  fire. 
"His  Grace,"  said  the  young  man,  with  almost  superb  in- 
solence, after  one  glance  at  Luttrell's  card,  "does  not  see 
newspaper  men  on  any  pretext  whatever."  Luttrell 
trembled  in  his  heart  before  the  arrogance  of  the  man- 
servant whom  he  recognised  as  being  immeasurably  his 
superior  in  social  position.  But  taking  his  courage  in 
both  hands  he  looked  steadily  out  of  his  grey  eyes  at  the 
impassive  face  of  the  footman,  and  said  with  a  really 
admirable  pretence  of  hauteur,  "Will  you  kindly  take  my 
card  to  the  duke  ?"  The  man  turned  over  a  page  of  the 
World  with  a  sign  of  impatience.  "What  I  have  said  I 
have  said,"  he  remarked,  and  then  poked  a  log  on  the  fire 
with  his  feet.  Luttrell  hesitated,  got  very  red  in  the  face, 
swore  dreadful  oaths  silently,  and  then  summoned  up  his 
sense  of  humour.  "You  are  very  courteous,"  he  said. 
"Thank  you."  He  held  out  his  hand  to  the  flunkey,  who 
heard  the  chink  of  money.  The  sound  had  a  peculiar 
effect  on  the  man,  and  his  face,  which  had  been  as  ex- 
pressionless as  a  bronze  Buddha,  became  more  human. 
Then  he  dropped  the  coins  which  Frank  had  slipped  into 
his  hand — dropped  them  as  though  they  had  been  red-hot, 
and  a  look  of  diabolical  rage  passed  over  his  face.  Frank 
had  presented  him  with  three-halfpence,  and  he  left  the 
ducal  mansion  with  an  almost  fierce  joy  at  having  got 
even  with  his  enemy. 

He  called  at  seven  addresses  which  he  had  noted  down 
from  Who's  Who.  They  included  four  peers,  a  Jew 
financier,  a  well-known  playwright,  and  a  young  countess 


64  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

well  known  in  the  society  columns  of  the  newspapers,  and 
not  unknown  in  the  Court  which  has  a  golden  anchor 
over  the  seat  of  Justice.  Three  of  the  peers  were  not  at 
home.  The  fourth,  a  young  man,  rather  too  stout  for  his 
age,  with  a  fat,  baby  face,  happened  to  be  in  the  hall 
when  Luttrell  put  the  question,  laughed  with  the  greatest 
good-nature  for  half  a  minute,  and  then  said,  "My  dear 
fellow,  ask  my  tailor,  won't  you  ?  He  does  not  allow  me 
to  have  any  ideas  on  clothes,  and  as  I  owe  him  quite  a 
good  deal,  I  am  bound  not  to  annoy  him." 

The  Jew  financier  was  away  shooting,  said  his  man, 
not  explaining  what  game  he  was  tracking  down. 

When  Luttrell  sent  in  his  card  to  the  countess  he  was 
surprised  to  be  invited  upstairs.  He  was  in  his  bowler 
hat  and  grey  serge  suit,  and  his  boots  were  rather  muddy 
after  walking  about  the  streets  on  a  dirty  day.  As  he 
went  up  a  soft-carpeted  staircase,  and  was  shown  into 
a  small  room  tastefully  and  beautifully  furnished,  he  felt 
abashed,  and  wondered  whether  he  could  invent  some 
excuse  for  a  hasty  retreat.  But  it  was  obviously  impos- 
sible, and  he  found  himself  staring  at  the  full-length  por- 
trait of  a  beautiful  woman  in  a  silver  frame  on  a  little 
Chippendale  table.  In  a  moment  the  door  opened  and  the 
lady  herself  appeared  in  the  flesh,  and  in  a  soft  gown  of 
grey  silk.  She  was  a  dark  woman  of  about  thirty-five, 
with  large,  luminous,  rather  haunting  eyes.  She  gave  her 
hand  to  Luttrell  and  smiled  into  his  eyes,  in  a  sad,  spir- 
itual way. 

"It  is  so  very  good  of  you  to  call,"  she  said.  "I  do 
so  love  your  paper !  Such  charming  articles  about  every- 
thing one  ought  to  know — the  Licensing  Bill,  Land  Tax- 
ation, and  the  Unemployed  question." 

Frank,  who  was  somewhat  embarrassed  to  find  that 
he  was  still  holding  her  hand,  lowered  his  eyes  before  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  65 

lady's  soulful  gaze,  and  said,  "Are  you  interested  in  those 
subjects  ?" 

"Oh,  passionately.  I  am  nothing  if  I  am  not  a  Socialist. 
I  do  so  pity  the  poor  Poor.  I  have  taken  them  up  as  a 
hobby,  and  I  find  it  ever  so  much  more  elevating  and  en- 
nobling than  poultry-keeping,  which  I  used  to  go  in  for 
rather  seriously.  I  am  studying  Sanitation  quite  furi- 
ously. It  is  so  intimately  connected  with  our  economic 
and  social  conditions,  is  it  not?" 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so,"  said  Frank.  "In  fact,  I  quite 
agree  with  you." 

He  wondered  how  long  the  countess  was  going  to  keep 
hold  of  his  hand.  She  relinquished  it  with  apparent  re- 
luctance, and  with  a  long-drawn  sigh.  "It  is  so  pleasant 
and  helpful  to  me  to  meet  men  like  you,"  she  said.  "You, 
who  are  in  the  very  centre  of  life  and  who  are  animated 
with  higher  ideals  than  society  of  the  present  day.  You 
will  stay  to  tea,  won't  you  ?" 

"I  am  afraid,"  said  Frank,  but  the  beautiful  woman 
touched  a  bell  and  a  young  powdered  footman  came  in 
at  once. 

"Tea,  Frederick,  and  some  cigarettes." 

The  countess  sat  down  near  the  fire,  drawing  her  skirt 
a  little  above  her  ankles  and  putting  her  feet  on  the  fen- 
der. "Do  sit  down,"  she  said,  "I'm  sure  you  must  be 
cold."  Frank  was  too  overwhelmed  with  embarrassment 
to  refuse,  and  sat  on  a  straight-backed,  gilded  chair,  won- 
dering whether  he  had  ever  felt  quite  such  a  fool  in  his 
life  before.  When  the  tea  was  brought  in  the  footman 
retired  and  the  countess  poured  out  for  Frank,  saying, 
"One  or  two  lumps  ?"  He  had  a  stick  in  his  hand  and  a 
hat  in  the  other,  and  he  wondered  desperately  how  on 
earth  he  was  to  take  the  little  Sevres  cup.  He  solved  the 
difficulty  by  putting  the  hat  on  the  floor,  feeling  that  he 


66  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

must  look  like  a  rate  collector  or  a  commercial  traveller 
touting  for  orders. 

The  countess  was  smoking  with  that  charming  grace 
which  makes  a  cigarette  a  magic  thing  in  the  hand  of  a 
beautiful  woman. 

"Life  is  so  very  complex,"  she  said,  staring  into  the  fire. 
"It  is  so  difficult  for  human  nature  to  resist  the  influence 
of  environment.  That  is  why  I  am  studying  Sanitation 
so  earnestly.  The  greatest  thing,  I  think,  is  to  see  the 
underlying  poetry,  the  passionate  human  impulse  in  the 
every-day  interests  and  duties  of  men  and  women.  Do 
you  not  think  so  ?" 

Frank  coughed  and  said,  "Quite  so." 

She  leant  forward  a  little  and  put  one  white  hand  on 
his  knee,  and  looked  earnestly  into  his  eyes. 

"As  a  literary  man,"  she  said,  "I  feel  you  will  under- 
stand. The  men  in  my  circle,  my  aura,  as  it  is  called,  do 
not  have  that  quick  perception  by  which  soul  looks  into 
soul,  though  no  words  are  spoken.  But  literary  men  see 
the  quivering  heart  beneath  the  corsage,  the  throbbing 
brain  underneath  the  coiffure,  the  spirit  beating  against 
its  prison  bars." 

"Do  you  write  much  yourself?"  asked  Frank,  with  as 
much  sympathy  as  he  could  get  into  his  voice,  and  trying 
to  keep  his  knee  from  wobbling  beneath  that  white  hand 
which  glittered  with  a  circlet  of  diamonds. 

"All  my  books,"  said  the  countess,  "are  written  in  in^ 
visible  ink  upon  the  tablets  of  sub-consciousness." 

"Really,"  said  Frank,  groping  dimly  for  her  meaning* 

"Though,"  she  added,  "it  is  true  I  have  produced  a 
pamphlet  on  Socialism  as  a  cure  for  Society.  Perhaps 
you  would  like  to  see  it." 

"Oh,  thank  you,"  said  Frank. 

"Do  you  mind  touching  that  bell  ?" 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  67 

When  the  man  came  in  she  said,  "Frederick,  a  copy  of 
my  pamphlet." 

"Perhaps,"  said  the  countess,  with  a  touch  of  eagerness 
in  her  voice,  "you  may  care  to  review  it  in  your  paper. 
It  has  only  been  published  six  months." 

"I  am  sure  it  is  very  interesting,"  said  Frank,  with  a 
diplomacy  that  rather  pleased  him. 

She  put  into  his  hand  a  slim  little  volume  bound  in 
green  silk  with  a  gold  coronet  on  the  cover. 

"It  is  my  message  to  the  world,"  she  said.  "My  ideal 
of  a  perfected  humanity.  Come  and  sit  by  my  side  and 
I  will  read  a  few  pages  to  you,  if  you  will  not  be  too 
unkind  a  critic."  Luttrell  wondered  how  he  could  escape 
from  this  Circe.  Her  haunting  eyes  troubled  him;  the 
touch  of  her  hand  made  his  pulse  beat ;  the  fragrance  of 
her  hair  had  a  subtle  effect  upon  his  senses.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  he  was  in  some  strange  Arabian  Nights  ad- 
venture. He  had  come  in  muddy  boots  to  the  house  of 
a  countess  to  ask  a  ridiculous  question  about  the  need  of 
new  fashions  for  men.  He  was  sitting  close  to  her  in  a 
beautiful  room  before  a  cosy  fire,  and  her  low,  mournful 
voice  was  reading  out  some  enchanting  poetry,  as  it 
seemed,  of  which  he  did  not  hear  or  understand  one  single 
word.  The  whole  thing  was  preposterous  and  wildly  im- 
probable. He  refused  to  believe  that  it  had  happened. 
He  had  probably  gone  raving  mad  after  a  week  in  Fleet 
Street,  and  was  sitting  in  a  padded  cell  imagining  the 
picture. 

Presently  the  man-servant,  or  the  mad  dream  of  a  man- 
servant, came  in  and  said :  "His  Grace  the  Duke  of  Bol- 
ton,  your  ladyship." 

Frank  started.  It  was  the  very  duke  whose  flunkey 
he  had  insulted  with  three-halfpence!  .  .  .  Yes,  surely 
he  was  mad.  Things  do  not  happen  like  this. 


68  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Oh,  my  dear  duke!"  said  the  lady,  letting  her  book 
slip  on  the  sofa  and  rising. 

A  tall  young  man  with  a  little  fair  moustache  came  in. 

"Got  any  tea  left  ?"  he  said,  "and  will  you  let  me  smoke 
a  cigarette  with  you?" 

"Nice  thing !"  said  the  countess.  "How  very  sweet  of 
you  to  come." 

She  turned  to  Frank  and  took  his  hand.  "Good-bye !  I 
am  so  sorry  you  have  to  go.  I  have  so  enjoyed  our  con- 
versation." She  gave  him  the  book  and  said,  "A  little 
review,  will  you?  Oh,  kind!  Come  and  see  me  again, 
won't  you?" 

Frank  bent  over  her  hand  for  a  moment  and  thanked 
her.  As  he  left  the  room  he  heard  the  young  duke  say, 
"Who's  your  pal?  A  piano-tuner?" 

Luttrell  went  out  into  the  street,  turned  into  Curzon 
Street,  and  then  banging  up  against  a  lamp-post  in  the 
darkness,  laughed  in  a  low  voice  which  was  a  little  hys- 
terical. 

He  had  spent  half-an-hour  with  the  countess,  and  had 
actually  met  the  duke,  in  spite  of  his  flunkey,  but  from 
neither  of  them  had  he  asked  for  representative  opinions 
on  the  need  of  new  fashions  for  men ! 

It  was  five  o'clock,  and  Frank  had  tea  and  then  set  off 
again  in  quest  of  Mr.  Townsend,  who  had  gained  the 
reputation  of  being  the  best-dressed  man  in  London. 
After  calling  at  his  flat  and  three  clubs,  Frank  finally  ran 
him  to  earth  at  the  Savoy  restaurant.  Townsend  received 
him  cordially,  and  asked  him  to  join  him  over  the  dinner- 
table.  It  was  nine  o'clock,  and  for  an  hour  the  man  who, 
to  Frank,  seemed  merely  vulgar,  and  dressed  in  an  eccen- 
tric way  which  marked  him  down  as  being  the  false  imita- 
tor of  a  man  of  fashion,  delivered  a  monologue  on  the  sub- 
ject of  clothes.  Then  he  apologised  for  leaving  in  a  hur- 
ry, and  left  Luttrell  to  pay  his  own  bill,  which  amounted 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  69 

to  half-a-guinea.  Frank  went  to  his  rooms  and  wrote  his 
"interview"  to  the  length  of  a  column,  endeavouring,  not 
without  success,  to  remember  the  egotistical  phrases  and 
strained  wit  of  the  man.  It  was  eleven  o'clock  when  he 
sent  up  his  "copy,"  and  the  only  satisfaction  when  he  got 
back  to  his  rooms  and  put  his  tired  feet  into  slippers  was 
that,  after  a  day  of  humiliation  and  ludicrous  adventure, 
he  had  at  least  brought  a  story  to  the  Rag.  He  slept 
feverishly  that  night,  dreaming  of  the  countess's  haunt- 
ing eyes  and  of  a  white  hand  that  tried  to  strangle  him. 
In  the  morning  at  breakfast  he  read  a  letter  from  his 
father,  telling  him  little  details  of  news  about  the  old  rec- 
tory life,  and  then  covering  three  pages  with  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  walk  in  the  autumn  woods.  "I  wish  you  had 
been  with  me,  Frank.  I  miss  our  old  comradeship  and 
our  long  talks  about  art  and  literature  and  nature." 

Frank  pushed  back  a  stale  egg,  lit  a  cigarette,  and 
plunged  into  the  roar  of  London  outside  the  gateway  of 
Staple  Inn.  The  old  home  life,  the  walks  with  his  father 
in  the  silent  woods  seemed  a  thousand  miles  and  a  thou- 
sand years  away;  he  would  like  to  go  back;  and  as  he 
thought  so,  Frank  knew  in  his  heart  that  he  would  never 
go  back  for  more  than  a  few  days  or  a  few  weeks.  He 
was  walking  now  quickly  towards  Fleet  Street,  towards 
the  street  of  adventure,  in  the  air  of  which  there  seemed 
to  be  a  subtle  poison  putting  a  spell  into  the  brains  of  men, 
so  that  though  they  go  a  thousand  miles  away  they  must 
always  return. 

In  the  office  he  asked  Leach,  the  clerk-in-charge,  for 
a  copy  of  the  paper,  which  he  opened  with  a  smile,  think- 
ing of  yesterday's  visits  to  dukes  and  peers  and  the  coun- 
tess, which  had  resulted  in  a  column  interview  with  Cyril 
Townsend.  But  having  turned  over  the  pages  of  the 
paper  several  times,  he  saw  with  a  smarting  spirit  that  it 
had  not  been  printed.  Not  a  line !  not  a  single  line !  It 


70  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

was  then  that  he  had  crushed  the  paper  in  his  hand  and 
said  "My  God !"  in  a  whisper. 

He  could  not  understand  it.  He  suspected  that  there 
must  be  some  conspiracy  against  him — to  keep  him  under, 
to  bring  about  his  dismissal.  Perhaps  Vicary  objected  to 
his  appointment  by  Bellamy.  Yet,  though  brusque,  he  was 
always  genial  and  hearty  in  his  manner.  Perhaps  he  had 
not  got  the  right  touch  for  journalism.  For  whatever 
reason  he  had  had  a  wretched,  disappointing  week.  All 
his  articles,  written  with  painful  anxiety  to  make  them 
bright,  pointed  and  interesting,  had  either  been  cut  down 
to  a  few  lines  or  left  out  of  the  paper.  Things  could 
not  go  on  like  this.  No  one  was  paid  a  wage  for  nothing. 
And  it  took  the  heart  out  of  a  man  who  was  eager  to  do 
good  work,  and  who  did  not  spare  himself  in  his  endeav- 
ours, which  extended  over  many  hours,  and  left  him  ex- 
hausted or  excited  late  at  night.  A  voice  interrupted 
Luttrell's  gloomy  reverie. 

"Are  you  thinking  of  the  silent,  sombre  woods,  Mr. 
Melancholy  Jacques?" 

Frank  started,  and  saw  Katherine  Halstead.  She  was  in 
a  blue  coat  and  skirt  and  big  black  hat,  on  which  a  snow-  j 
white  bird  had  perched,  and  she  stood  with  one  elbow 
on  the  back  of  a  chair  and  her  chin  propped  in  the  palm 
of  her  hand.  It  was  a  pretty  attitude — she  had  the  gift 
of  pretty  attitudes — and  for  the  first  time  it  struck  Frank 
that  her  face  was  like  one  of  Romney's  portraits  of  Lady 
Hamilton,  in  her  early  days  as  Emma  Hart — the  one  with 
the  muff  and  the  mischievous  eyes. 

"I  was  not  thinking  of  anything  half  so  pleasant/'  he  ] 
said.    "I  was  in  a  rather  murderous  mood,  to  tell  you  the 
truth." 

"Tell  me  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth." 

She  spoke  lightly,  but  there  was  a  note  of  sympathy  in 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  71 

her  voice.  It  was  an  invitation  to  him  to  confide  his 
trouble.  She  sat  down  with  one  foot  on  the  fender,  like 
the  countess  on  the  day  before,  yet  with  a  simplicity  quite 
unlike  the  lady  of  the  day  before  with  the  haunting  eyes. 
Then  she  took  off  her  hat  and  let  it  drop  on  to  the  hearth- 
rug. Frank,  who  had  no  sister,  felt  that  Katherine  Hal- 
stead  was  rather  a  sisterly  girl.  While  he  was  thinking 
so  she  looked  up  with  her  head  a  little  on  one  side,  quiz- 
zing him. 

"The  first  week  is  pretty  miserable.  One  gets  hardened 
afterwards." 

"I  have  had  an  appalling  experience/'  said  Frank.  "I 
cannot  understand  it  at  all." 

He  gave  her  an  account  of  his  adventures.  She  laughed 
at  them  so  merrily  that  he  was  hurt. 

"They  amuse  you." 

"Yes.  It  is  all  very  funny.  Don't  you  see  the  humour 
of  it?" 

"No,"  said  Frank.  "It  is  all  too  painful  to  be  humour- 
is." 

"Oh,  you  must  keep  your  sense  of  humour  or  you  are 
ost.  .  .  .  You  don't  understand  the  system,  that  is  all." 

"Is  there  any  system?"  said  Frank,  raising  his  eye- 
brows. "It  seems  rather  to  show  a  lack  of  system." 

Katherine  Halstead  pretended  to  look  very  wise. 
?rank  thought  she  looked  very  pretty. 

"Listen.    I  will  speak  to  you  in  parables." 

She  explained  that  a  great  London  newspaper  is  like 
a  beehive,  in  which  the  individual  counts  for  nothing,  the 
whole  community  being  dominated  by  one  supreme  pur- 
Dose.  The  bees  go  forth  far  and  wide  to  gather  the 
>ollen,  they  come  staggering  back  with  their  burden ;  there 
s  a  continual  sacrifice  of  life,  the  drones  are  killed  ruth- 
essly  when  food  is  scarce,  and  the  slaves  of  the  hive  toil 
ceaselessly  under  relentless  laws. 


72  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"This  office,"  said  Katherine  Halstead,  "is  a  human  bee- 
hive. We  are  under  the  same  iron  law.  'The  paper  must 
be  filled/  'The  paper  must  not  be  let  down/  That  is  our 
hymn  of  sacrifice." 

"Go  on,"  said  Frank.    "This  is  quite  exciting !" 

"The  worker  bees  bring  home  more  pollen  than  is 
wanted  for  the  hive ;  lives  are  sacrificed  if  it  is  necessary 
for  the  continuance  of  the  hive,  and  the  whole  crowd  of 
wriggling  creatures  in  this  particular  beehive  is  under  the 
awful  irresistible  spell  of  one  mysterious  unnecessary 
purpose — the  good  of  the  paper." 

Frank  laughed. 

"Your  metaphor  is  mixed,  isn't  it?  But  it  is  a  jelly 
good  one." 

The  girl  put  off  her  cap  of  wisdom  and  laughed. 

"I  have  just  been  reading  a  book  on  bees.  Perhaps 
I've  put  it  all  wrong.  I  couldn't  help  being  struck  with 
the  simile." 

"It  is  a  pretty  awful  one,"  said  Frank.  "I  know  some- 
thing about  bees,  and  the  tyranny  of  the  hive  is  the  cruel- 
lest thing  in  nature." 

"Oh  no,  there  is  more  cruelty  in  Fleet  Street."  She 
held  her  hand  out  as  a  screen  between  the  fire  and  her 
face. 

"It's  a  funny  thing,  I  don't  think  men  are  naturally 
more  cruel  in  Fleet  Street  than  in  other  places.  It's  the 
system  that  makes  them  cruel.  Look  at  our  Chief,  Bel- 
lamy, he  is  the  kindest-hearted  little  man  in  the  world, 
yet  he  puts  the  paper  first,  before  men's  lives  and  souls J 
Of  course  when  you  get  really  cruel  men  like — well,  one 
mustn't  mention  names — their  opportunities  are  unlim-| 
ited.  If  their  men  get  tired  or  stale  or  slack,  if  they  make 
a  mistake  or  if  they  are  not  so  good — or  thought  not 
to  be  so  good — as  one  of  the  hundred  people  outside  ask-i 
ing  for  their  job,  if  they  get  worsted  in  an  office  intrigue, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  73 

out  they  go  into  the  street,  to  become  the  hungry  space 


men/' 


She  turned  round  suddenly  and  said — • 

"Have  you  ever  been  on  space  ?" 

"No,"  said  Frank.    "What  does  it  mean  ?" 

"May  you  never  know.  ...  I  have  seen  many  men 
who  work  on  space.  You  can  always  tell  them  by  the 
hunted  look  in  their  eyes." 

"You  give  me  the  cold  shivers,"  said  Frank. 

"Oh,  I  could  curdle  the  blood  in  your  veins." 

"Don't  spare  me.  Let  me  see  clearly  into  the  chamber 
of  horrors,  so  that  I  may  know  all  in  store  for  me." 

They  were  both  talking  and  smiling  in  low  voices  like 
children  telling  bogey  stories  round  a  nursery  fire. 

The  girl  told  him  about  a  man — a  brilliant,  golden- 
hearted  man,  who  had  been  sixteen  years  on  a  news- 
paper. One  morning  he  received  his  dismissal  with  a 
month's  salary.  The  proprietor  had  put  his  nephew  into 
his  place — a  gilded  youth  who  had  been  living  a  fast  life 
in  London.  The  man  who  had  given  himself  unstintingly 
to  the  paper  for  sixteen  years  was  found  dead  in  his 
bed,  with  one  end  of  a  rubber  tube  under  the  bedclothes 
and  with  the  other  end  fixed  to  the  gas-jet. 

"Thank  heavens,  I  have  electric  light  in  my  rooms!" 
said  Frank. 

She  told  him  of  a  newspaper  office  in  which  there  had 
been  a  change  of  proprietors.  "You  must  know  what  that 
is  ...  a  change  of  proprietors  always  means  a  tragedy." 
Sixteen  men  had  been  turned  off  without  mercy.  They 
had  held  most  important  positions  on  the  newspaper. 
Some  of  them  had  got  other  places  at  half  their  former 
salaries.  One  man  was  writing  advertisements  for  liver 
pills.  Another  had  become  press  agent  of  a  subur- 
ban theatre,  and  another  could  be  found  any  day  at  the 
corner  of  Whitefriars  Street  begging  for  sixpence  from 


74  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

any  old  friends,  so  that  he  might  get  drunk  and  forget 
his  misery. 

"You  can't  get  drunk  on  sixpence,"  said  Frank. 

"Oh  yes,  on  a  hungry  stomach,"  said  Katherine  Hal- 
stead. 

Frank  looked  at  his  companion  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  fire-place.  There  was  something  queer  in  these  words 
spoken  by  a  pretty  girl  with  blue  eyes.  Katherine  Hal- 
stead  caught  his  glance.  She  flushed  quickly. 

"One  learns  in  Fleet  Street,"  she  said. 

"I  suppose  that's  the  secret  of  it  all.  ...  Men  will  suf- 
fer many  things  in  the  quest  of  knowledge." 

"Quest  is  a  good  word!"  said  Katherine.  "But  it  is 
copyright.  Chris  Codrington  has  made  it  his  own." 

"I  say,  how  satirical  you  are !"  said  Frank.  "You  are 
always  laughing  at  me." 

She  opened  her  eyes  at  him. 

"Laughing  at  you?  Good  gracious,  I  hope  I  should 
not  be  so  impertinent  as  to  laugh  at  a  learned  gentleman 
from  Oxford !" 

"You  are  doing  it  again,"  said  Frank.  "It  is  not  my 
fault  that  I  went  to  Oxford.  As  for  knowledge,  you 
seem  to  know  everything.  Is  there  anything  about  life 
you  don't  know?" 

Katherine  Halstead  shook  her  head,  and  pursed  up  her 
lips  and  pretended  to  look  very  solemn  and  wise. 

"What  I  don't  know  isn't  knowledge.  .  .  .  You  see  we 
journalists,"  she  gave  a  little  cough,  "go  everywhere  and 
see  everything." 

Frank  leant  over  the  fire  and  stared  into  the  embers. 

"Journalists  have  the  gift  of  invisibility,"  he  said,  "they 
are  always  watching  and  nobody  sees  them." 

"Good  job  too,"  said  Katherine.  "Some  of  us  would 
do  nicely  as  scarecrows." 

"It's  as  good  as  a  fairy  tale  ...  a  public  man  speaks 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  ft 

some  rash  words  after  dinner  and  invisible  hands  take 
down  his  words  in  secret  writing  and  publish  his  folly 
to  the  world.  Murders  are  done  down  back  streets  and 
history  is  made  in  the  courts  of  Eitrope,  and  men  and 
women  carve  out  their  careers  and  break  each  other's 
hearts,  and  plot  and  intrigue  and  express  their  egotism 
and  tell  obvious  lies,  and  die  their  little  deaths,  and  go 
to  their  graves  in  the  paupers'  cemetery,  or  Westminster 
Abbey,  according  to  their  luck — and  all  the  while  watch- 
ful eyes  are  on  them,  and  invisible  people  are  spying, 
eavesdropping,  and  taking  down  notes  for  publication." 

"That  sounds  like  an  essay,"  said  Katherine  Halstead 
suspiciously. 

"It  is,"  said  Frank ;  "I  wrote  it  for  the  Spectator— -be- 
fore I  came  into  Fleet  Street." 

They  both  laughed,  a  merry  boy  and  girl  laugh  which 
gave  the  lie  to  the  dreadful  pessimism  of  their  conversa- 
tion. 

"I  must  go  and  do  some  work,"  said  Katherine.  "If 
Mr.  Vicary  has  any  commands  this  morning " 

"Don't  go  yet,"  said  Frank.  There  was  a  note  of 
eagerness  in  his  voice  which  made  the  girl's  eyelids  flicker 
with  a  momentary  self-consciousness.  "I  want  you  to 
tell  me  lots  of  things." 

"What  things  ?  .  .  .  I  have  told  you  everything." 

"No,  I  want  to  know  all  about  the  private  life  of  the 
men  walking  about  these  passages." 

Katherine  opened  her  eyes  with  an  air  of  alarm.  "Oh, 
the  revelations  would  be  too  shocking!" 

"I  want  to  know  what  their  homes  are  like." 

"They  haven't  any,"  said  Katherine,  ".  .  .  only  sleep- 
ing places." 

"And  their  wives "  said  Frank. 

"Journalists'  wives!  .  .  .  Those  tragedies  have  not 
been  written  down.  .  .  .  They  live  in  little  back  streets 


76  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

at  Herne  Hill  and  Brixton.  Some  of  them  take  to  drink — 
poor  creatures — others  take  to  religion.  It  is  less  harm- 
ful to  them,  perhaps,  though  their  husbands  resent  it. 
Others  just  have  children,  and  watch  the  clock  go  round 
while  they  darn  stockings,  and  put  the  whisky  on  the  side- 
board before  they  go  to  bed,  and  wake  up  in  the  middle 
of  the  night  when  their  husbands  drop  their  boots  by  the 
hall  table.  .  .  .  Oh,  it  is  bad  to  be  a  woman  journalist — 
some  people  call  us  lady  journalists! — but  heaven  pre- 
serve, me  from  being  a  journalist's  wife!" 

Frank  was  startled,  and  being  a  man  brought  up  in 
the  country  with  a  very  limited  knowledge  of  women, 
felt  curiously  uncomfortable.  It  seemed  to  him  for  a 
moment  that  Katherine  Halstead  had  drawn  back  the  veil 
of  her  heart,  and  that  he  had  caught  a  swift  glimpse  of 
some  distress  and  bitterness,  some  strife  with  unfulfilled 
instincts.  The  words  themselves  had  made  him  think. 
In  a  few  sentences  she  had  given  him  a  vivid  mental  pic- 
ture of  miserable  homes  and  unhappy  lives.  "Others  just 
have  children  .  .  .  and  watch  the  clock  go  round."  That 
had  given  him  a  curious  and  unaccountable  shiver.  But 
it  was  not  the  words  which  had  made  him  search  for  a 
light-hearted  reply  without  finding  one,  and  get  red  in  a 
silly,  nervous  way.  It  was  a  sudden  expression  of  pain, 
an  indefinable  look  of  sharp  discontent,  which  had  for  a 
few  seconds  hardened  the  girl's  face.  For  a  moment  he 
saw  that  look  which  he  had  not  expected  to  find  in  eyes 
which  had  often  a  laughing  light  in  them — the  look  of 
the  woman  who  knows  too  much,  and  who  has  felt  the 
sharp  edge  of  disappointment  and  disillusion.  She  rose 
from  the  fire,  and  Frank  knew  that  the  conversation  was 
at  an  end.  He  could  have  wished  it  to  go  on  for  an 
hour. 

"How  we  have  been  wasting  precious  time!  ...  Do 
you  mind  passing  over  that  duck  ?" 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  77 

Luttrell  bent  down  and  picked  up  the  black  hat  with 
the  little  white  bird,  and  smoothed  its  feathers. 

"This  is  charming,"  he  said.     "It  suits  you  awfully 

well!" 

Katherine  took  it  from  him  and  glanced  up  at  him  from 
under  the  brim  of  it,  as  she  put  it  on. 

"Flatterer !"  she  said,  with  a  coquettishness  that  was 
half  assumed. 

"No,  honour  bright !"  said  Frank. 
Christopher  Codrington  came  into  the  room  with  a  long, 
leisurely  stride.  As  he  took  off  his  tall  hat  with  its  rakish 
brim,  he  glanced  quickly  from  Katherine  Halstead  to 
Frank  Luttrell,  and  his  thin  lips  suggested  the  ghost  of 
an  ironical  smile. 

"How  cosy  the  fire  looks,"  he  said.    "Have  you  been 
telling  ghost  stories?" 

"We've  been  discussing  social  philosophy,"  said  Kath- 
erine. She  rang  up  the  telephone  and  asked  if  Mr.  Vicary 
had  come,  and  then  said,  "Thanks,  I  will  come  at  once." 
"Social  philosophy !"  said  Codrington.  "Dangerous, 
very  dangerous !  I  should  hardly  like  to  tell  you  the  hor- 
rible holes  I  have  fallen  into  when  discussing  that  sub- 
ject." 

His  pale  blue  eyes  were  fixed  on  Katherine,  and  Lut- 
trell noticed  that  they  seemed  to  make  her  uncomfortable. 
She  turned  her  head  away,  and  then,  with  a  word  about 
having  to  see  Vicary,  left  the  room.  Luttrell  wondered, 
and  then  was  surprised,  at  a  certain  sensation  of  nervous- 
ness— what  relations  there  were  between  Katherine  Hal- 
stead  and  Christopher  Codrington.  He  remembered  how 
Codrington  had  fingered  the  miniature  on  her  breast  on 
the  night  of  his  first  interview  with  Bellamy,  and  how 
he  had  bent  over  her  chair  whispering  to  her  one  evening. 
The  man  drew  off  a  pair  of  lavender  gloves  and  blew 
into  them.  Then  he  took  off  his  long  frock  overcoat, 


78  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

revealing  himself  in  an  immaculate  morning  suit.  Sud- 
denly he  put  the  tip  of  his  fingers  to  his  forehead  as 
though  he  had  forgotten  something  vastly  important,  and 
then  remembered. 

"My  hat!"  he  said  in  a  low  voice. 

Luttrell  looked  at  his  hat,  which  lay  on  the  table,  a 
beautiful,  if  somewhat  archaic,  piece  of  furniture. 

"What  is  the  matter  with  it?"  he  asked. 

Codrington  smiled,  a  pale,  glimmering  smile. 
'  "I  do  not  refer  to  that."     He  hesitated,  and  said  in  a 
mysterious  way,  "May  I  have  a  word  with  you  ?" 

"Certainly,"  said  Luttrell. 

"I  wonder,"  said  Codrington,  "if  you  would  lend  me 
half-a-sovereign  for  one  day?  Foolishly,  I  came  with 
only  a  few  shillings.  It  is  most  important  that  I  should 
not  be  entirely  destitute  this  morning.  A  point  of  honour, 
in  fact." 

Luttrell  remembered  that  Codrington  still  owed  him 
half-a-crown.  He  remembered  also  that  he  had  only 
thirty  shillings  in  his  pocket,  which  would  have  to  last 
him  a  week.  Still,  how  the  deuce  could  he  refuse  the 
fellow?  It  was  quite  certain  that  a  man  who  dressed 
like  a  duke — at  least,  like  a  duke  in  musical  comedy — 
would  pay  him  back  again,  and,  after  all,  it  was  rather 
an  honour  to  be  asked  a  favour  by  this  distinguished- 
looking  colleague.  Still,  it  was  horribly  inconvenient! 
He  wished  he  were  strong-minded  enough  to  frame  an 
excuse. 

"By  all  means,"  he  said,  and  rummaged  in  his  pocket 
for  the  small  gold  piece  which  he  knew  was  among  the 
loose  silver. 

"A  thousand  thanks !  my  dear  Luttrell,"  said  Codring- 
ton. He  put  on  his  hat,  altering  its  angle  by  a  hair's 
breadth  before  a  mirror  in  a  bamboo  hatstand,  and  then 
left  the  room  as  two  or  three  other  men  came  in. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  79 

One  was  Brandon,  the  oldish-young  man  whose  hair 
was  so  curiously  streaked  with  white.  He  carried  a 
glorious  bouquet  of  white  chrysanthemums,  which  he  put 
under  the  nose  of  Quin,  the  little  dramatic  critic. 

"What  do  you  think  of  that  for  a  market  bunch  ?" 

"I  don't  think !"  said  Quin.  "How  much  did  they  rook 
you  for  it  ?" 

"I  had  'em  given  to  me,"  said  Brandon.  "I  told  Nancy 
I  wanted  them  for  my  very  special  lady-friend,  and  she 
wouldn't  take  a  penny  for  them." 

Quin  whistled. 

"Introduce  me  to  Nancy,"  he  said,  "I'd  like  to  know 
her.  Where  did  you  pick  her  up?" 

"Remember  the  Eagle  Street  case?  That  girl  came 
almost  as  near  to  being  hanged  as  John  Lee  of  Babba- 
combe.  Fortunately  I  picked  up  the  clue  of  the  rusty  nail 
which  led  to  the  arrest  of  Nosey  William,  who  swung 
for  the  job.  Nancy  hasn't  forgotten.  She  would  sell 
her  chemise  for  me  if  I  was  down  on  my  luck." 

"The  gods  send  me  such  lady-friends,"  said  Quin. 
He  put  his  hand  in  his  waistcoat-pocket  and  pulled  out 
a  little  golden  heart. 

"Do  you  think  Mother  Hubbard  will  like  that  bauble?" 

Brandon  fingered  it.  "Charming,  but  not  so  unalloyed 
as  the  gold  of  her  own  good  heart." 

"Tell  her  that,"  said  Quin;  "she'll  like  it." 

"Oh,  quite  spontaneous,"  said  Brandon. 

Vicary  came  downstairs  with  Katherine  Halstead. 
"What's  all  this,  boys  ?  Old  Mother  Hubbard's  birthday, 
and  you  didn't  let  me  know!  That's  playing  a  dashed 
low-down  game  with  me.  Why,  she  was  a  pet  of  mine 
before  you"  boys  came  out  of  the  turnip  beds !" 

"She  mothered  every  one  of  us,"  said  Brandon. 

"Yes,  and  lent  you  money  when  you've  blued  your 
weekly  wage,"  said  Vicary.  "Oh,  I  know!  You  can't 


8o  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

deceive  your  old  uncle.  What's  that? — flowers,  a  gold 
locket — very  nice,  I'm  sure!  I  suppose  they'll  go  down 
on  the  expense  sheets  under  cab- fares  and  tips  to  de- 
tectives. Nice  lads,  aren't  you?  Oh  no,  not  at  all." 
Luttrell  was  surprised  to  see  that  Vicary  had  left  his 
official  manner  upstairs,  and  that  in  the  reporters'  room 
the  men  treated  their  taskmaster  as  one  of  themselves. 

"By  the  Lord,"  said  Vicary,  "you're  not  going  to  leave 
me  out  of  this  show  ?  Mother  Hubbard  would  never  for- 
give me.  I  should  never  forgive  myself.  Here,  what 
can  I  buy  in  Ludgate  Hill — a  box  of  chocolates,  a  dia- 
mond tarrarrer,  or  Quin's  latest  love-song  set  to  trom- 
bones and  castanets.  What  do  you  think  she  would  like  ?" 

"She  likes  flowers  best  in  the  world,"  said  Katherine. 

"Well,  that's  easy,"  said  Vicary.  He  touched  the  bell 
and  kept  the  knob  pressed  until  a  boy  came  running  in. 
Vicary  flicked  a  ten-shilling-piece  at  him. 

"Go  and  get  a  bunch  of  flowers,"  he  said,  "from  Robert 
Green.  Tell  him  it's  for  me;  and  get  back  in  fifteen 
minutes,  or  I'll  hit  you." 

Christopher  Codrington  came  back  and  said  "Good- 
morning"  to  Vicary  in  his  grave  Charles-Grandison  way, 
lifting  his  hat. 

"Take  those  basilisk  eyes  off  me,  won't  you?"  said 
Vicary.  "You  look  as  if  you'd  been  up  all  night  again." 
He  turned  to  Katherine  Halstead  and  said  in  a  stage 
whisper,  "Don't  you  have  anything  to  do  with  that  feliow 
Codrington.  He  leads  a  wicked  life.  Sad  for  one  so 
young !" 

"Pardon  me,  Mr.  Vicary,"  said  Codrington  gravely.  **I 
went  to  bed  at  ten — and  had  happy  dreams.  ...  I  have 
just  been  purchasing " 

"Buying,"  said  Vicary— "better  word." 

"I  have  just  been  purchasing,"  said  Codrington,  "a 
small  gift  for  Mother  Hubbard." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  81 

"Oh,  you  have,  have  you  ?"  said  Vicary,  seizing  a  hand- 
some box  of  sweetmeats  from  Codrington's  hands,  and 
putting  one  of  the  sugared  bon-bons  into  his  mouth. 
"Well,  I'll  bet  anything  you  didn't  pay  for  it." 

"You  are  wrong,"  said  Codrington,  with  dignity,  "and 
joking  apart,  I  think  you  should  not  make  these  accusa- 
tions against  my  moral  character  without  a  tittle  of  justi- 
fication or  proof." 

Vicary  turned  round  to  the  company  and  winked  pro- 
digiously at  them. 

"Wonderfully  noble  soul,  Codrington!"  he  said. 
"Which  of  you  lent  him  the  money  for  these  lollipops?" 

There  was  a  guffaw  of  laughter  from  the  men  and  a 
ripple  from  Katherine  Halstead.  Frank  Luttrell  tried 
not  to  look  self-conscious,  and  saw  that  Codrington's  eyes 
met  his  with  a  silent  message.  He  changed  the  sub'ject 
of  conversation  by  saying,  "Who  is  Mother  Hubbard?" 

There  was  a  silence  and  the  men  stared  at  one  another 
with  an  exaggerated  air  of  incredulity. 

"Holy  snakes  and  all  angels!"  said  Vicary.  "This 
young  man  has  been  many  days  in  the  great  organ  of  the 
Liberal  Government  (which,  by  the  way,  no  Liberal  ever 
thinks  of  buying)  without  having  come  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Mother  Hubbard.  I  decline  to  believe  it." 

"I'm  sorry,"  said  Frank,  feeling  that  an  apology  was 
necessary.  "Who  is  the  lady?" 

Vicary  turned  helplessly  to  the  others,  flopping  his 
great  hand  on  the  table  as  though  exhausted  by  aston- 
ishment. 

"Quin,"  he  said,  "Codrington,  Brandon,  Miss  Halstead, 
tell  him  who  the  lady  is." 

"She  is  our  patron  saint,"  said  Quin. 

"And  edits  our  fashion  page,"  said  Katherine  Hal- 
stead. 

"She  is  the  lady  of  the  golden  heart,"  said  Brandon. 


82  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"And  lives  with  me  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue,"  said  Kath- 
erine, 

"For  several  years,"  said  Ouin,  "she  has  mothered 
every  young  man  who  has  come  into  this  street  of  trag- 
edy." 

"She  has  made  tea  for  them,"  said  Brandon. 

"And  soothed  their  weary  hearts,"  said  Vicary,  "which 
news-editors  have  done  their  best  to  break." 

"She  has  given  them  words  of  wisdom,"  said  Brandon. 

"Which  they  have  seldom  acted  upon,"  said  Kath- 
erine. 

"She  has  opened  the  sanctuary  door  of  her  golden  heart 
to  them,"  said  Codrington. 

"And  the  door  of  4OA  Shaftesbury  Avenue,"  said  Kath- 
erine,  "of  which  I  pay  half  the  rent." 

"She  is  one  of  the  best,  the  very  best,"  said  Vicary. 

"And  so  say  all  of  us,"  said  Brandon  and  Quin  ancj 
Codrington. 

Frank  Luttrell  thought  that  when  his  colleagues  di<J 
agree  their  unanimity  was  marvellous. 

"I  should  like  to  know  Mother  Hubbard,"  he  said. 

"My  dear  lad,"  said  Vicary,  "it  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  your  immortal  soul,  if  you  go  in  for  that  hobby.  Un- 
less you  swear  allegiance  to  Mother  Hubbard  you  tvill  go 
down  the  slippery  slope  to  perdition." 

The  company  followed  Vicary  out  of  the  room  and 
walked  solemnly  along  the  corridor  to  a  door  on  which 
was  the  name  Miss  Margaret  Hubbard. 

Vicary  tapped,  and  a  low  contralto  voice  called  out, 
"Come  in." 

"Look  here,"  said  Vicary,  turning  to  Codrington,  "you 
must  do  the  felicitous  flip-flap;  it's  what  we  pay  you 
for." 

Codrington  gave  his  superior  smile,  and  went  into  the 
room  followed  by  his  escort.  Luttrell,  who  was  the  last 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  83 

to  go  in,  saw  a  lady  sitting  at  a  desk  cutting  out  pieces 
of  paper  with  a  long  pair  of  scissors.  She  rose  as  they 
all  entered,  and  stood  facing  them  with  laughing  sur- 
prise. Luttrell  had  expected  to  see  a  little  old  lady  in 
black  silk  with  white  ringlets  and  spectacles.  But  he 
saw  a  woman  of  about  thirty-five  in  a  plain  tailor-made 
coat  and  skirt.  She  had  a  pleasant  face,  square,  with 
straight  eyebrows,  a  blunt,  good-natured  nose,  full  chin 
and  firm  mouth,  rather  massive  and  almost  masculine  in 
its  expression  of  will-power,  but  softened  by  a  tender- 
ness of  expression,  and  by  brown  eyes  brimming  over 
with  mirth. 

She  held  out  her  long  scissors  and  snapped  them. 

"Have  you  come  to  get  your  noses  cut  off  ?" 

Christopher  Codrington  stepped  out. 

''Mother  Hubbard,"  he  said  gravely,  "we,  the  bad 
children  who  live  in  the  shoe,  have  come  to  wish  you 
many  happy  returns  of  the  day,  and  to  bring  you  little 
gifts,  worthless  in  themselves,  but  symbolical  of  our  love 
and  devotion  to  you." 

There  were  cries  of  "Hear,  hear,"  and  "Stick  to  it, 
Codrington !" 

"Fiddle-de-dee,"  said  Miss  Margaret  Hubbard,  "at 
thirty-six  years  of  age  a  woman  should  be  allowed  to  for- 
get her  birthdays,  surely?" 

"Each  birthday  of  a  good  woman,"  said  Christopher 
Codrington,  raising  his  hand  as  a  sign  that  he  was  not  to 
be  interrupted,  "is  a  golden  link  in  the  chain  of  a  beau- 
tiful life." 

Vicary  said,  "Is  there  any  sub-editor  with  a  blue  pencil 
here?" 

"It  is  a  day,"  continued  Codrington,  "when  for  a  little 
while  the  carking  cares  of  the  world  must  be  forgotten, 
and  when  we  come  into  the  circle  of  a  gracious  lady's  sun- 
shine, remembering  her  goodness,  the  little  acts  of  be- 


84  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

nignity  which  she  strews  upon  her  path  like  jewels,  the 
words  of  motherly  kindness  which  fall  from  her  lips 
like  flowers  from  a  dusty  highroad,  filling  the  air  with 
the  sweet  fragrance  of  their  charity." 

A  howl  of  laughter  greeted  this  eloquence. 

Miss  Margaret  Hubbard  turned  to  Katherine  Halstead 
and  said  very  quietly — 

"Kitty,  my  dear,  will  you  get  the  waste-paper  basket 
and  put  it  over  the  head  of  that  tall  boy  with  the  golden 
hair?" 

It  was  Brandon,  the  crime  expert,  who  executed  the 
order  so  swiftly  that  Codrington  was  caged  before  he 
could  escape.  The  two  men  struggled  desperately  in  the 
corner,  and  Quin  stepped  forward  and  presented  his 
heart. 

"The  gold  is  very  thin,"  he  said,  "but  its  value  is  sym- 
bolical. Eh,  what?" 

Miss  Margaret  Hubbard  took  the  trinket  and  fastened 
it  by  a  pin  to  her  bosom.  "Nobody  shall  say  I  wear  my 
Heart  on  my  sleeve."  Then  she  took  Quin's  hand  and 
pressed  it  between  both  of  hers,  which  were  rather  large. 
"Thanks,  friend,"  she  said. 

"Old  Mother  Hubbard,"  said  Brandon,  who  had  got 
worsted  in  the  struggle  with  Codrington  and  had  one 
end  of  his  collar  hanging  loose,  "may  you  have  as  many 
years  as  the  petals  in  this  market  bunch.  I  have  counted 
'em — fifteen  hundred  and  three." 

Margaret  Hubbard  put  her  face  down  to  them. 

"I  am  glad  to  have  good  friends,"  she  said. 

Vicary  came  forward  with  his  own  bouquet,  which 
had  just  been  brought  in  by  the  messenger  boy. 

"Here's  to  you,  Mother  Hubbard,"  he  said,  "and  may 
you  forgive  all  news-editors." 

"Yes,  for  such  gifts  as  this."  She  gave  a  little  cry  of 
ecstasy.  "Oh,  oh,  they  are  too  beautiful !" 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  85 

Codrington  put  his  box  of  sweets  on  her  desk. 

"Your  sweetness  is  greater  than  theirs,  dear  lady,"  he 
said. 

She  put  one  into  Codrington's  mouth. 

"Perhaps  that  will  stop  your  phrase-making,  Mr. 
Euphues,"  she  said.  Then  she  put  her  arm  on  his  sleeve 
and  said,  "Thanks,  Chris." 

Vicary  had  slipped  out  of  the  room,  but  his  place  was 
taken  by  Silas  Bellamy,  who  poked  his  head  through  the 
doorway  and  said — 

"Do  I  smell  an  office  intrigue?" 

"The  Chief  I"  said  Katherine  Halstead,  and  the  others 
cried,  "Come  in,  sir,  come  in." 

Bellamy  came  in  smiling. 

"I  suppose  you  thought  I  didn't  know  what  was  going 
on?  ...  There's  very  little  goes  on  in  the  office  that 
doesn't  come  to  my  ears,  and  don't  make  any  mistake." 

He  advanced  to  Margaret  and  pulled  something  out  of 
his  tail  pocket. 

"Miss  Hubbard.  My  felicitations.  Pray  accept  this 
as  a  small  token  of  my  esteem." 

It  was  a  golliwog  whose  white  eyes  glared  at  the  com- 
pany with  a  ludicrous  air  of  surprise. 

"Beautiful  boy !"  cried  Miss  Hubbard,  giving  its  black 
nose  a  kiss. 

"Ungrateful  woman !"  said  Bellamy.  "Surely  that  re- 
ward should  have  been  mine." 

There  was  a  burst  of  laughter  and  Miss  Hubbard  said, 
"If  you  are  not  very  careful " 

But  the  Chief,  blushing  like  a  school-boy,  retired  hastily  . 
from   the   room — accompanied  by   a   new   outburst   of 
laughter. 

"I  have  never  known  that  threat  to  fail,"  said  Miss 
Hubbard.  "They  all  run  away!" 

Luttrell  had  been  watching  and  listening  in  the  back- 


86  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ground.  This  birthday  scene  seemed  to  him  to  present 
newspaper  life  in  one  of  its  pleasantest  aspects.  For  a 
few  moments  the  editor  and  news-editor  had  put  off  their 
authority  and  had  joined  the  staff  in  a  merry  scene  which 
was  not  without  an  underlying  sentiment.  Quin,  the 
dramatic  critic,  who  told  witty  wicked  stories;  Brandon, 
the  crime  specialist,  who  seemed  to  be  interested  ex- 
clusively in  sordid  murders  and  mysteries;  Vicary,  the 
big  man,  who  gave  out  the  orders  for  the  day ;  Codring- 
ton,  the  easy-going,  lackadaisical  dandy;  Katherine  Hal- 
stead,  like  a  wild  rose  of  Fleet  Street,  had  all  come  with 
birthday  gifts  to  the  woman  of  thirty-six,  like  a  family 
of  children  to  an  elder  sister.  Yet  "Old  Mother  Hub- 
bard"  was  not  so  old  after  all.  Perhaps  only  Codrington, 
and  Katherine,  and  Frank  himself  were  younger  than  this 
sweet-faced,  smiling  woman  in  whose  eyes  there  was  a 
steady,  restful  light,  and  who  received  the  congratula- 
tions of  her  Chief  and  colleagues  with  simple  pleasure. 

Katherine  Halstead  took  Frank's  hand  and  pulled  him 
forward. 

"Here's  a  new  boy  for  you,  Mother  Hubbard." 

"Spank  him  right  soundly  and  put  him  to  bed/'  said 
Brandon. 

"Lift  him  up  tenderly  and  treat  him  with  care,"  said 
Codrington. 

Old  Mother  Hubbard  took  Frank's  hand. 

"Now,  who  may  you  be  ?"  she  said,  looking  at  him  with 
friendly  eyes. 

"I  am  called  Frank  Luttrell.  Beyond  that  I  am  no- 
body." 

"He  has  high  ideals,  and  a  pure  and  beautiful  soul," 
said  Brandon,  and  then  bursting  into  imaginary  tears, 
said,  "Would  that  I  were  a  little  child  again  upon  my 
mother's  knee." 

"He  comes  fresh  and  unsullied  from  a  gentle  English 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  87 

home,"  said  Quin,  snivelling.    "And,  oh,  the  pity  of  it!" 

"He  is  a  young  Greek  god,"  said  Codrington,  in  poetical 
intonation,  "strayed  from  the  woods  of  Hellas " 

"Into  hell,"  said  Brandon. 

"He  is  one  of  us,"  said  Katherine,  "and  we  are  very 
glad  to  have  him." 

Luttrell  stood  with  Mother  Hubbard  holding  his  hand, 
and  the  light  shafts  of  satire  from  the  men  made  him 
wince.  It  was  clear  to  him  that  those  fellows  thought 
him  a  weak,  sensitive,  namby-pamby  thing.  It  would 
always  be  like  that.  He  would  always  be  lonely  and 
friendless,  kept  outside  the  circle  of  men's  comradeship, 
or  treated  with  good-natured  contempt.  If  only  he  could 
overcome  that  miserable  shyness  which  was  the  curse  of 
his  life!  Why  could  he  not  be  like  other  men,  frank  and 
easy,  with  a  tough  hi4e  and  a  touch  of  brutality  and 
coarseness  which  were  necessary  to  manhood  ?  Even  now 
he  felt  that  he  was  looking  like  a  booby,  blushing  nerv- 
ously and  showing  that  he  was  uncomfortable  as  the  cen- 
tre of  observation.  But  he  threw  a  grateful  look  at 
Katherine  Halstead,  whose  words  suddenly  brought  a 
flush  to  his  face.  They  were  kind,  comradely  words. 

Margaret  Hubbard  patted  him  on  the  hand. 

"Those  boys  are  very  foolish,"  she  said.  "But  you  will 
find  that  we  are  a  happy  family  in  this  office.  We  live  on 
the  bright  side  of  Fleet  Street." 

She  turned  to  the  others. 

"Look  here,  young  men,  if  you  are  very  good  I  am 
going  to  invite  you  to  a  party  this  evening.  Katherine 
and  I  have  been  making  all  sorts  of  goodies — toffee  and 
tartlets,  and  tarradiddles.  There's  to  be  a  gala  night  in 
Shaftesbury  Avenue.  Who  will  come?" 

"Did  I  hear  toffee  and  tartlets?"  said  Quin.  "We  will 
all  come.  I  speak  on  behalf  of  the  Rag" 

"Well,  pass  the  word  round.    Old  Mother  Hubbard  at 


88  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

home  9  to  12.    Music,  muffins  and  moral  conversation. 
Strictly  moral,  if  you  please !    R.S.V.P." 

"We  have  much  pleasure  in  accepting,"  said  Brandon 
very  politely. 

"Mr.  Christopher  Codrington  begs  to  thank  Mother 
Hubbard,  and  will,  D.V.,  be  present  at  her  little  gather- 
ing. Should  he  unfortunately  be  prevented  by  acts  of 
God  and  news-editors " 

"No  excuses  accepted,"  said  Miss  Hubbard.  She 
turned  to  Frank:  "I  shall  expect  you  too,  Mr.  Lut- 
trell." 

He  accepted  eagerly,  and  smiled  into  the  brown  eyes  of 
Mother  Hubbard.  There  seemed  to  be  an  understanding 
between  them  already.  No  one  could  doubt  the  frank- 
ness and  kindness  and  cheery  good-nature  of  that  uncon- 
ventional woman. 

Katherine  Halstead,  who  was  standing  by  his  side,  put 
her  hand  on  his  arm  for  a  moment. 

"You  are  telling  the  truth  when  you  say  that  you  will 
come?" 

Their  eyes  met  for  a  moment.  Frank  was  pleasantly 
surprised  by  the  eager  invitation  in  Katherine's  glance. 
It  made  his  pulse  thump  for  a  moment.  It  made  him 
look  forward  to  that  evening  party  with  an  excitement 
which  he  could  hardly  understand. 

"Oh,  rather!"  he  said  boyishly. 

A  messenger  boy  came  into  the  room. 

"Is  Mr.  Luttrell  here?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank. 

"Mr.  Vicary  wants  you,  sir." 

"Oh,  oh,"  cried  Margaret  Hubbard.  "If  he  gives  you 
an  evening  engagement  I  will  jab  the  scissors  into  him." 

"I  shall  have  to  play  truant,"  said  Frank. 

He  went  upstairs,  astonished  at  his  light-heartedness. 
He  wondered  why  life  seemed  to  be  a  more  merry  game 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  89 

since  yesterday,  when  he  had  found  it  stupid  and  exasper- 
ating. The  sparkle  in  Katherine  Halstead's  eyes  seemed 
to  have  lighted  some  fire  in  his  heart  which  yesterday 
had  been  filled  with  the  cold  ashes  of  disillusionment. 

He  went  briskly  into  Vicary's  room  and  got  his  "assign- 
ment," as  it  was  called.  He  was  marked  down  for  a  day 
in  a  London  police-court. 

"Bendall  has  been  in  good  form  lately,"  said  Vicary. 
"You  ought  to  get  some  good  fun  out  of  it.  I'll  keep  a 
column  open.  It's  a  chance  for  you,  my  lad/' 

Frank  said  "Right-o,  sir.  Thanks  very  much,"  and 
went  out  of  the  room.  On  the  landing  he  said  to  himself, 
"Good  fun !"  in  a  wondering  way.  He  suspected  that  his 
sense  of  humour  was  not  very  keen. 


CHAPTER   VI 

A  NEWSPAPER  man  has  no  difficulty  in  getting  into  a 
police-court — unless  he  has  to  fight  his  way  through  a 
crowd  of  Suffragettes — and  Frank  Luttrell  had  only  to 
show  his  card  to  be  admitted  to  a  whitewashed  room  di- 
vided into  box-like  compartments  for  solicitors,  wit- 
nesses, clerks,  officials  of  the  court,  and  the  general  pub- 
lic— represented  by  a  row  of  unshaven  men  of  the  obvi- 
ously "unemployed"  class. 

About  thirty  young  policemen  sat  with  their  helmets 
in  their  laps  nudging  each  other  in  the  ribs  and  laughing 
in  excellent  spirits.  In  a  box  by  himself  hardly  big 
enough  to  hold  him  sat  a  fat  inspector  with  a  heavy, 
frowning  face  who  picked  his  teeth  and  sucked  his  tooth- 
pick. Underneath  the  magistrate's  seat,  which  was  raised 
on  a  dais,  the  clerk  of  the  court,  a  thickset  man  of  middle- 
age,  with  an  apoplectic  neck  and  bald  head,  arranged  his 
papers,  shovelled  snuff  into  his  nose  out  of  a  doubled-up 
envelope  and  occasionally  referred  to  the  weather  or  the 
charge-sheet  to  the  usher  who  had  respectful  manners,  a 
blue  clean-shaven  chin  and  rusty  black  clothes  like  a  man- 
servant in  a  decayed  but  genteel  family.  Three  benches  in 
a  box  labelled  "witnesses"  and  some  seats  outside  the 
box  were  filled  with  rows  of  peculiar  people.  There  were 
several  young  men  with  bullet-heads  cropped  closely  all 
over,  except  where  a  single  lock  in  front  was  curled  round 
and  plastered  over  the  forehead.  They  wore  coloured 
handkerchiefs  round  the  neck  and  brown  cloth  suits,  and 
they  spoke  in  hoarse  whispers  and  laughed  hoarsely  as 
though  they  had  lost  their  voices  by  shouting  too  loudly 

90 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  91 

and  too  long.  Next  to  them  were  two  or  three  well- 
dressed  men,  evidently  gentlemen,  who  looked  uneasy  in 
their  position,  and  had  restless  eyes  and  hands.  One 
man,  tall,  with  white  hair  and  a  grizzled  moustache,  and 
the  straight  back  of  an  old  soldier,  sat,  with  his  silk  hat  at 
an  angle,  staring  at  the  window  through  which  the  Jan- 
uary sun  crept  with  a  pale  gleam.  Frank's  eyes  rested  on 
him,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  never  seen  such  a 
look  of  stern  grief. 

Next  to  this  man  was  a  young  woman  with  a  baby  at 
her  breast,  which  she  rocked  incessantly,  and  hushed 
loudly  every  time  the  child  gave  a  little  wail.  The  wom- 
an's face,  pallid  and  pinched,  with  high  cheek-bones,  and 
long,  thin  mouth,  and  dull,  despairing  eyes,  into  which 
tears  came  flooding  at  times,  scalding  tears  which  she 
did  not  trouble  to  wipe  away — sent  a  stabbing  pain  to 
Frank's  heart.  She  looked  as  if  she  were  starving.  Yet 
the  child,  upon  whom  her  tears  fell,  was  plump  enough. 
But  starving  or  not,  it  was  evident  that  she  was  the  victim 
of  misery.  Once  she  broke  into  a  kind  of  whimper  like 
an  animal  in  pain,  and  for  the  first  time  the  elderly  man 
by  her  side  stirred,  and  spoke  a  word  or  two  to  her,  and 
touched  her  baby's  cheek. 

There  were  other  women  there,  with  faces  even  more 
dreadful  to  see.  With  shapeless  bonnets  and  wisps  of 
grey  hair  tied  up  behind,  they  sat  in  frowsy  clothes,  star- 
ing in  front  of  them,  sullenly,  one  or  two  of  them  rather 
wildly,  with  a  mad  light  in  eyes  which  came  bulging  out 
of  faces  blotched  by  drink.  They  did  not  seem  to  know 
each  other,  and  sat  in  separate  places,  but  there  was  a 
strange  likeness  among  them,  their  faces  had  been  cast 
in  the  same  mould — of  evil  lives,  vicious  environment, 
and  the  indescribable  horrors  of  the  lowest  pit  of  the 
underworld.  Here  and  there  were  respectable  men  with 
quiet,  steady  eyes,  and  a  dignity  which  belongs  to  the 


92  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

honest  working  man  in  working  clothes;  and  here  and 
there  were  foreign  men  and  women,  with  the  thick  lips, 
the  glittering  eyes,  the  curved  nose  of  the  human  beast  of 
prey.  In  the  midst  of  these  strange  people  was  a  pretty 
girl — a  typist  or  West  End  milliner  perhaps — who  sat 
with  a  mournful  face,  twisting  and  untwisting  a  hand- 
kerchief. Frank  wondered  what  tragedy  had  brought  her 
to  this  court  where  she  was  as  much  out  of  place  as  a 
dove  in  a  slaughter-house.  Frank  had  lived  nearly  all  his 
life  in  the  country  where  his  observation  had  been  trained 
to  watch  small  signs  and  small  facts,  to  listen  to  the  flut- 
tering of  a  bird  in  a  bush  or  to  its  startled  note  of  fear  or 
to  the  ecstasy  of  its  song  of  love.  Now  in  London  he 
was  always  watching  the  human  face  and  listening  to  the 
human  voice,  more  varied  and  more  wonderful  in  their 
revelation  than  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  nature  world. 
In  this  court  he  saw  many  faces  and  many  pairs  of  eyes, 
and  in  all  of  them  except  those  of  th.;  young  policemen, 
there  was  either  fear,  or  despair,  or  cruelty,  or  dull  res- 
ignation. The  sound  of  the  voices  made  him  shiver — 
the  sound  of  the  hoarse  whispering  of  evil  voices,  of  a 
cruel  chuckle  of  mirth  from  one  of  the  bullet-headed 
men,  of  a  woman's  whimper,  of  the  fat,  greasy,  careless 
laughter  of  young  constables,  at  the  wailing  of  the  child 
at  the  breast  of  the  woman  with  the  pinched  face,  and  of 
a  cornet  which  in  some  street  outside  was  playing  with 
long-drawn,  melancholy  notes  the  old  tune  of  "Home 
Sweet  Home." 

Frank  wrote  a  line  in  his  note-book. 

"Home  Sweet  Home !"  Then  he  said  to  himself,  "Good 
God!  There's  humour  in  that.  Yes,  it's  devilishly  hu- 
morous !" 

Presently  the  magistrate  came  into  court  and  took  his 
seat,  nodding  to  the  clerk,  who  rose  for  a  moment  with  the 
other  officials.  Frank  Luttrell  studied  this  well-known 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  93 

"stipendiary,"  William  Trevelyan  Bendall.  There  was 
the  humorist  who  was  to  provide  a  column  of  "good  fun" 
for  Vicary.  There  was  the  court  jester  whose  remarks 
were  always  followed  in  halfpenny  evening  papers  with 
the  word  "laughter"  in  brackets.  He  was  a  middle-aged 
man  with  grey  hair,  and  a  long,  ascetic,  clean-shaven 
pallid  face  in  which  burnt  dark,  deep-set  eyes.  It  was 
a  cold,  expressionless  face  with  a  hard  mouth,  and  as 
he  gave  a  brief  glance  at  the  array  of  witnesses,  and  then 
round  the  court,  Frank  met  that  gaze  for  a  moment  and 
felt  a  cold  shiver  pass  down  his  spine. 

The  magistrate  yawned,  put  his  finger  down  the  charge- 
sheet  and  called  out  a  number.  It  was  repeated  by  the 
clerk  and  the  usher,  and  by  a  policeman  standing  at  a 
door  labelled  "Prisoners  only,"  who  bawled  it  into  the 
corridor  outside.  Then  began  the  first  scene  in  a  day 
of  squalid  drama  which  made  Frank  Luttrell  flush  hot 
and  cold,  go  faint  and  sick,  get  angry  and  bitter,  and  then 
through  the  sheer  monotony  of  its  tragedy,  become  call- 
lous  and  unconcerned. 

For  many  hours  there  came  into  the  dock  a  procession 
of  prisoners  of  varying  ages,  of  both  sexes,  and  of  dif- 
ferent classes  of  social  life.  Most  of  them  came  at  the 
rate  of  one  a  minute  or  two  in  three  minutes.  There 
was  a  succession  of  "drunks  and  disorderlies" — as  they 
were  called  by  the  police  witnesses — old,  white-haired 
men  with  watery  eyes  and  toothless  gums,  old  women  in 
black  bonnets  and  shiny  black  dresses,  who  whined  in 
the  dock,  young  women  with  touzled  hair  and  hard,  sul- 
len faces,  young  men  of  respectable  appearance  who  held 
their  heads  down  and  looked  wretchedly  ashamed  of 
themselves,  and  men  in  the  last  stages  of  filth  and  rags, 
with  claw-like  hands  and  feverish,  blood-shot  eyes  and 
gaunt  cheek-bones.  Some  of  them  mumbled  excuses; 
they  had  taken  "a  drop  too  much,"  they  had  been  celebrat- 


94  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ing  a  birthday  or  a  funeral,  an  old  friend  had  been  stand- 
ing treat  to  them.  But  one  of  the  younger  men  thrust 
out  a  long  arm,  naked  within  the  ragged  sleeve  of  an 
overcoat,  and  in  a  kind  of  shrill  sob,  said,  "You'd  get 
blind  sime  as  me  if  you  'ad  my  blarsted  life !  I've  been 
aht  o*  work  six  months.  Oh,  my  Gord !" 

He  broke  into  an  hysterical  sobbing,  and  the  magistrate 
raising  his  eyebrows  said,  "Whence  these  tears?  .  .  . 
Forty  shillings  or  ten  days." 

One  man  was  brought  into  the  dock  with  his  head  and 
throat  in  bandages,  charged  with  attempted  suicide.  As 
he  appeared  the  woman  with  the  baby  in  her  arms  began 
crying  loudly  and  piteously  until  she  was  hushed  down, 
not  unkindly,  by  one  of  the  constables  who  bent  over  her 
and  said,  "Now,  don't  you  go  and  make  a  bloomin'  row, 
my  dear.  It's  all  right,  I  tell  you." 

"What  did  you  want  to  kill  yourself  for?"  said  the 
magistrate.  "Is  there  a  mother-in-law  in  the  case  ?"  This 
remark,  which  would  have  brought  cries  of  "Chestnut!" 
from  the  gallery  of  the  lowest  music-hall,  brought  broad 
grins  to  the  faces  of  the  young  policemen  in  court,  caused 
the  usher  to  laugh  in  an  obsequious  way  behind  his  hand, 
and  made  the  clerk  shake  his  head  as  though  to  say, 
"What  wit!  Oh,  dear,  what  a  witty  man  he  is,  to  be 
sure!" 

"I  couldn't  bring  'ome  any  blunt,  and  the  kids  were 
crying  out  for  bread,"  said  the  prisoner. 

"And  you  really  thought,"  said  the  magistrate,  "that 
by  killing  yourself  you  would  provide  your  wife  and 
children  with  all  the  luxuries  of  life?  That  is  a  strange 
theory  of  political  economy,  is  it  not?" 

The  prisoner  stared  at  him  blankly. 

"Answer  me,  man,"  said  the  magistrate.  "Didn't  you 
hear  my  question?" 

"No,"  said  the  prisoner.     "Beg  pardon,  sir." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  95 

The  policeman  by  the  dock  repeated  the  question. 

"The  magistrate  says  it's  a  strange  theory  of  political 
economy,  ain't  it?" 

"Political  what  ?  Never  'eard  of  it !"  said  the  prisoner 
in  a  dazed  way. 

"And  that's  the  result  of  our  national  system  of  edu- 
cation!" said  the  magistrate.  Again  there  was  "laugh- 
ter" in  court,  and  Frank  Luttrell  was  now  convinced  that 
he  had  not  been  born  with  a  sense  of  humour.  When 
the  magistrate  went  on  questioning  the  miserable  fellow 
with  the  bandaged  throat,  turning  his  dazed,  stupid  an- 
swers into  an  opportunity  for  making  mirthless  jests,  it 
seemed  to  Luttrell  that  he  was  in  a  torture-chamber  where 
quivering  human  souls  were  being  racked  by  that  cynical 
inquisitor  on  the  bench.  Finally,  the  man  was  allowed  to 
leave  the  dock  with  a  caution  to  be  more  careful  of  his 
throat  in  future.  He  stumbled  out  in  a  helpless  way, 
and  the  young  wife  with  the  baby  joined  him  at  the 
door.  As  they  were  bundled  out  in  the  corridor  Frank 
saw  the  man  bend  down  and  kiss  the  child,  and  then  put 
both  hands  to  his  head  with  a  long-drawn  moan. 

A  young  girl  with  a  dead-white  face  and  black  hair 
was  charged  with  stabbing  her  lover.  The  wounded 
man  went  into  the  witness-box,  and  described  how  she 
had  chased  him  round  the  table  and  then  stuck  the  knife 
into  his  arm,  pinning  him  to  a  cupboard. 

"Why  did  you  do  it?"  asked  the  magistrate. 

"He  betrayed  me,"  said  the  girl  in  a  low  voice.  "I 
wanted  to  kill  him,  I  can't  understand  why  God  let  him 
live." 

"Perhaps  God  was  busy  at  the  time,"  said  the  magis- 
trate. "He  has  so  many  things  to  attend  to."  (Loud 
laughter. ) 

The  girl  was  remanded  for  a  week,  and  followed  into 
the  dock  by  a  young  Italian  waiter  accused  of  stealing 


96  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

a  silver  tea-spoon.  Two  witnesses  were  examined  and 
the  magistrate  said,  "One  month." 

"Is  dis  vat  you  call  English  justice?''  said  the  prisoner 
in  the  dock.  "I  did  not  pinch  de  dam  spoon." 

"Pinch  ?"  said  the  magistrate.  "What  does  he  mean  by 
pinch?" 

"What  do  you  mean  by  pinch  ?"  said  the  policeman  to 
the  prisoner. 

"Accidenti!     I  did  not  pinch  it,  I  say." 

"I  suppose  he  means  'steal/ "  said  the  magistrate. 
"For  misuse  of  the  English  language,  another  month. 
.  .  .  Two  months'  hard  labour." 

A  tall,  good-looking,  well-dressed  boy  of  about  twenty- 
one  was  brought  up  on  a  charge  of  forgery.  Frank  Lut- 
trell  saw  the  soldierly  old  man  among  the  witnesses  give  a 
start,  flush  painfully,  and  then  become  as  white  as  his 
moustache.  From  the  police  evidence  it  appeared  that  he 
was  the  son  of  a  well-known  officer  in  the  army.  He  had 
become  entangled  with  a  chorus  girl,  and  had  been  living 
far  in  advance  of  his  allowance.  It  was  this  which  first 
brought  him  under  suspicion,  and  he  was  arrested  for 
forging  his  father's  name  to  a  cheque  made  out  for  £250. 

"Where  did  the  money  go  to?"  said  the  magistrate. 

"To  the  lady  associated  with  the  prisoner,"  said  the 
detective  giving  evidence. 

"Ah !"  said  the  magistrate  thoughtfully.  "I  have  heard 
that  chorus  ladies  are  even  more  expensive  as  a  hobby 
than  golf." 

The  magistrate  was  well  known  as  an  enthusiastic 
golfer,  and  his  remark  which  seemed  utterly  meaningless 
to  Frank  was  received  with  more  loud  laughter.  In  the 
middle  of  it  the  young  prisoner  turned  round  and  saw 
the  soldierly  old  man  in  court.  Their  eyes  met,  the  boy's 
appealing  and  piteous,  the  old  man's  stern  and  mournful. 

So  the  drama  went  on,  with  many  different  characters 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  97 

in  the  dock,  charged  with  crimes  of  violence,  petty  lar- 
ceny, disorderly  conduct,  and  burglary.  There  was  no 
one  in  court  to  say  a  word  in  defence  of  any  prisoner, 
the  questions  put  to  them  by  the  magistrate  or  the  clerk 
only  seemed  to  bewilder  them,  and  for  the  most  part  they 
remained  silent,  sullenly,  or  despairingly,  or  in  a  dazed, 
senseless  way,  while  the  cynical  man  on  the  bench  made 
jesting  remarks  of  a  dull,  strained,  and  often  meaning- 
less character,  and  while  the  officials  and  some  of  the 
people  in  the  public  gallery  sniggered  and  guffawed,  and 
waited  with  their  lips  stretched  into  a  fixed  smile  for 
the  next  feeble  shaft  of  satire  or  pointless  pun. 

As  the  prisoners  came  and  went  Frank  noticed  how 
they  were  handled  by  the  policemen.  Through  the  door 
opening  into  the  corridor  he  could  see  the  men  and  women 
as  they  were  brought  up  from  the  cells  and  passed  along 
a  line  of  policemen  in  the  passage,  and  then  into  the  court 
by  the  constable  at  the  door,  and  then  into  the  dock  by 
the  warder.  Never  once  was  a  policeman's  hands  off  a 
prisoner  until  he  stood  facing  the  magistrate.  They 
pawed  him,  not  roughly,  but  with  a  kind  of  gentle,  per- 
suasive, almost  affectionate  pressure,  in  which  there  was 
something  curiously  repulsive  and  disgusting.  But  it  was 
the  magistrate  who  made  Frank  go  hot  and  cold,  and 
who  set  his  nerves  quivering,  so  that  once  or  twice  he  had 
a  kind  of  devilish  temptation  to  stand  up  and  curse  him. 
That  long,  ascetic  face,  those  keen,  relentless  eyes,  that 
hard,  cynical  mouth,  which  curled  into  a  smile  as  he  shot 
some  blunted  arrow  of  wit  at  one  of  the  wretched  crea- 
tures in  the  dock  stamped  themselves  on  Frank  Luttrell's 
brain.  The  casual  way  in  which  he  passed  sentence  of 
"one  month,"  "two  months,"  "forty  shillings  or  seven 
days"  on  these  human  scarecrows,  these  blear-eyed  old 
men,  these  whimpering  old  women,  these  haggard,  weak- 
chested,  ^half-starved  boys,  was  damnable  in  its  brevity 


98  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

and  iteration.  In  twelve  minutes  by  Frank's  watch  he 
condemned  ten  men  to  an  aggregate  of  eighteen  months' 
hard  labour.  Hardly  one  of  them  had  said  a  word  in  de- 
fence, not  one  of  them  had  a  friendly  voice  in  court  to 
say  a  word  in  his  favour.  The  magistrate  always  accept- 
ed the  police  evidence  as  conclusive.  Probably  the  pris- 
oners were  guilty  of  the  crimes  with  which  they  stood 
charged,  but  Frank  Luttrell  wondered  whether  any  inno- 
cent and  ignorant  man  or  woman  would  ever  get  the  bene- 
fit of  the  doubt,  or  escape  from  those  policemen's  paws, 
in  this  court  of  summary  jurisdiction  where  it  seemed  that 
every  accused  person  was  held  guilty  before  the  mockery 
of  a  two  minutes'  trial. 

When  the  court  rose  for  the  day  Luttrell  went  out 
into  the  street  feeling  as  though  he  had  been  beaten  with 
rods.  A  few  months  ago  in  the  old  Abbey  School  at 
King's  Marshwood  he  had  called  out  for  "Life."  He  had 
wanted  to  escape  from  his  solitude  into  the  whirlpool  of 
humanity.  And  this  was  life !  For  seven  hours  he  had 
been  behind  the  scenes  of  human  passion,  vice,  weakness, 
and  tragedy.  In  imagination  he  followed  that  procession 
of  men  and  women  through  the  door  of  the  court  into 
their  prison  cells,  and  saw  their  dreadful  eyes  staring  at 
the  blank  walls,  and  their  wretched  bodies  writhing  on 
the  stone  floors ;  and  in  imagination  he  visited  the  homes 
they  had  left  behind,  with  miserable,  starving  wives  and 
wailing  children.  It  was  all  a  terrible  vision  into  the 
mean  streets  of  life  in  London,  and  Luttrell,  born  in  a 
village  rectory,  taught  by  a  father  and  mother  of  high 
ideals  and  infinite  love,  knowing  more  of  the  silent  woods 
than  of  the  crowded  streets  of  life,  self  conscious  in  the 
presence  of  his  fellow-men,  and  sensitive  by  nature  and 
upbringing,  had  suffered  mental  and  spiritual  torture  dur- 
ing this  day  of  revelation.  He  went  into  a  public-house 
close  to  the  police-court  and  asked  for  a  whisky-and- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  99 

soda.  The  glass  trembled  in  his  hand  as  he  took  it,  and 
he  gulped  down  the  liquid  like  a  man  who  has  survived 
a  shipwreck  or  some  great  shock.  He  repeated  the  words 
Vicary  had  said  to  him  in  the  morning,  "There  will  be 
good  fun  in  it!"  And  then,  thinking  of  what  he  had 
seen  during  the  last  seven  hours,  he  said — 

"Fun,  oh  my  God !     Good  fun !" 

Darkness  was  creeping  into  the  streets  as  he  walked 
back  to  Staple  Inn,  and  a  great  tide  of  men  and  women 
was  surging  down  Holborn,  going  homewards  after  of- 
fice hours.  The  light  of  electric-standards  and  shop- 
fronts  streamed  upon  their  faces  as  they  passed  him, 
so  that  to  his  overwrought  imagination  they  seemed  like 
dream  faces,  ghost  faces,  hurrying  to  eternity.  He  was 
glad  to  get  into  the  quietude  of  Staple  Inn,  out  of  that 
crowd  of  human  souls  with  their  unknown  passions,  and 
vices,  and  miseries.  Perhaps  some  of  them  would  be 
brought  up  at  Bow  Street  next  morning,  before  that  man 
with  the  ascetic  face  and  cynical  smile  who  would  give 
them  one  month  or  two  months,  with  a  jest  or  a  jibe! 

In  Staple  Inn  there  was  a  pool  of  silence  with  the  dull 
roar  of  the  traffic  beyond.  A  black  kitten  came  miauling 
up,  and  stroking  itself  against  Frank  Luttrell's  leg.  He 
stooped  down,  and  picked  up  the  ball  of  black  fluff  and 
pressed  it  against  his  chest.  He  felt  a  curious  affection 
for  this  little  wandering,  lonely  creature  which  had  come 
up  to  him  out  of  the  darkness.  Passionately  fond  of  ani- 
mals, it  appealed  to  his  sense  of  comradeship  and  to  the 
protecting  pity  which  the  strong  feel  for  the  weak. 

"You  and  I  both  seem  forlorn  creatures  wandering  in 
the  dark,"  he  said. 

He  took  the  kitten  with  him  upstairs  to  his  rooms,  and 
gave  it  some  milk  which  it  lapped  greedily.  It  made 
him  feel  less  lonely  when  it  sat  on  the  table  in  front  of 
him,  playing  with  his  pipe,  and  chasing  its  own  tail. 


ioo  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Funny  little  beggar!"  he  said.  "It  doesn't  care  a 
damn  how  many  broken  hearts  there  are  or  how  many 
souls  are  racked  in  the  torture-chambers  of  life !  Would 
to  heaven  I  had  been  born  with  a  tail  to  chase !" 

He  sat  down  to  write  his  article,  his  article  of  "Good 
fun."  He  glanced  at  the  clock.  In  another  hour  he 
ought  to  be  at  Mother  Hubbard's  birthday  party.  His 
heart  gave  a  leap.  After  all,  he  was  glad  he  hadn't  been 
born  with  a  tail!  Katherine  Halstead  would  be  there. 
He  wanted  to  see  her  in  her  own  rooms,  away  from  the 
Ra\g.  He  wondered  whether  he  would  have  the  chance 
of  sitting  near  her,  and  what  she  would  be  dressed  in, 
and  whether  she  would  be  in  a  merry  mood.  It  was  cur- 
ious how  her  face  haunted  him.  He  had  seen  it  in  court, 
several  times,  in  the  pale  gleam  of  sunshine  that  had  come 
through  the  windows,  in  the  dock  by  the  side  of  a  woman 
with  bloodshot  eyes  and  a  broken  nose,  in  his  note-book 
when  he  had  been  scribbling  aimlessly,  making  all  sorts 
of  stupid  patterns  with  his  pencil.  He  wished  he  could 
draw  figures  and  faces.  He  would  have  liked  to  have 
drawn  her  as  she  sat  on  the  floor  roasting  chestnuts,  with 
the  firelight  on  her  face;  or  standing  with  her  arm  on 
the  back  of  a  chair  and  her  chin  in  the  palm  of  her  hand. 
He  wondered  whether  he  would  ever  find  the  key  to  her 
character.  She  baffled  him.  He  could  not  tell  what  was 
the  meaning  of  the  fretfulness  and  discontent  which 
sometimes  seemed  to  make  her  a  little  hard  and  bitter. 
She  seemed  to  know  too  much  about  the  ugly  things  of 
life,  and  yet  sometimes  she  was  very  girlish,  with  a  laugh 
that  was  clear  and  merry  and  melodious. 

The  kitten  had  curled  itself  on  his  lap,  and  was  purring 
in  its  sleep.  Luttrell  lit  his  pipe,  and  with  his  elbows  on 
the  table  faced  a  neat  pile  of  blank  paper.  Presently  he 
began  to  write,  stabbing  the  paper  with  short,  swift  sen- 
tences, his  lips  curled  into  a  grim  smile.  Oh,  he  was  en- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  101 

joying  himself!  He  was  dipping  his  pen  not  into  ink 
but  into  vitriol,  and  with  this  biting  acid  he  etched  out  the 
portrait  of  William  Trevelyan  Bendall,  stipendiary  mag- 
istrate, as  he  administered  justice  in  the  court  of  sum- 
mary jurisdiction.  He  wrote  for  three-quarters  of  an 
hour  and  then  lifted  the  kitten  off  his  lap  and  put  it  down 
on  the  rug  before  the  fire. 

With  a  glance  at  the  clock  he  rushed  off  to  Fleet  Street 
and  handed  in  his  article  to  Vicary  who  was  still  at  his 
desk,  working  in  his  shirt-sleeves. 

"You're  just  the  man  I  want  to  see,"  said  Vicary.  "Is 
that  your  police-court  stuff?  Good.  .  .  .  Look  here, 
there's  been  a  jolly  motor-omnibus  smash  at  Hornsey. 
One  killed  and  five  injured.  Get  off  at  once  and  find  out 
more  details/' 

Luttrell  hesitated. 

"I  had  a  private  appointment,"  he  said.  "Miss  Hub- 
bard " 

Vicary  stared  at  him. 

"Private  appointment!  Did  I  hear  you  say  private 
appointment  f" 

He  swore  a  frightful  oath,  and  then  laughed  as  though 
his  anger  had  changed  to  mirth. 

"My  dear,  innocent  boy,"  he  said.  "Surely  you  don't 
imagine  that  any  newspaper  man  has  a  right  to  make  pri- 
vate appointments  ?  There  is  only  one  law  in  this  street. 
If  you  are  going  to  be  married,  if  your  wife  has  twins, 
if  she  has  run  away  with  the  next-door  neighbour,  if  your 
mother  is  drawing  her  last  dying  breath,  you've  got  to 
go  to  Hornsey  or  to  hell,  or  anywhere  else,  if  the  Rag 
wants  you  to  go.  Understand  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Luttrell. 

"That's  all  right.     Then  get  off,  and  don't  waste  time." 

Luttrell  went  out.  He  had  not  an  exact  idea  where 
Hornsey  was.  He  guesSeji  vaguely  that  it  was  some- 


102  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

where  in  the  East  End.  But  he  knew  that  not  far  away 
was  Shaftesbury  Avenue,  where  Katherine  Halstead  and 
"Old  Mother  Hubbard"  had  some  coffee  and  tarts  wait- 
ing for  him.  He  had  been  eager  all  day  for  the  hour 
when  he  might  knock  at  the  door  of  a  little  flat  and  hear 
Katherine  Halstead's  laughter  beyond  the  door,  and  see 
her  coming  to  him  across  a  cosy  room. 

It  was  cold  and  foggy  in  Fleet  Street.  He  was  tired 
after  an  exhausting  day.  But  the  Rag  wanted  him,  and 
he  was  the  slave  of  the  Rag.  He  turned  his  face  east- 
ward, away  from  Shaftesbury  Avenue  and  from  Kath- 
erine and  Mother  Hubbard.  He  was  beginning  to  know 
the  meaning  of  newspaper  life.  Katherine  Halstead  was 
right.  The  system  was  very  cruel. 


CHAPTER  VII 

AT  half-past  nine  Luttrell  stood  on  the  top  landing  of  a 
house  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue.  It  was  over  a  bookseller's 
shop,  now  barred  up  for  the  night.  On  a  small  door  in 
front  of  him,  under  a  dim  gas-light,  was  a  brass  plate 
with  two  names  on  it:  Miss  Margaret  Hubbard,  Miss 
Katherine  Halstead. 

Luttrell  had  made  desperate  efforts  to  get  here.  He 
had  gone  down  to  Hornsey,  interviewed  the  driver  of 
the  wrecked  omnibus  who  was  shedding  tipsy  tears  in  the 
charge-room,  and  two  passengers  who  having  been  saved 
from  death  were  now  making  their  thanksgivings  in  the 
bar  parlour  of  a  gin-palace.  He  had  written  his  story 
coming  back  in  the  train,  had  rushed  up  with  it  to  the 
news-editor's  room,  and  then  had  hailed  a  hansom  and 
told  the  driver  to  take  the  shortest  cut  to  Shaftesbury 
Avenue. 

Now  that  he  stood  outside  the  door  of  the  flat  he  had 
a  strong  determination  to  turn  back.  He  was  splashed 
with  mud,  cold  to  the  bones,  and  he  had  just  remembered 
that  he  had  eaten  nothing  since  midday.  It  was  a  dis- 
graceful hour  to  call  on  two  ladies  for  the  first  time.  He 
would  creep  downstairs,  and  go  to  the  nearest  restaurant 
for  a  quiet  meal. 

Through  the  doorway  he  heard  the  sound  of  ladies* 
voices  and  the  ripple  of  a  woman's  laugh.  It  was  Kather- 
ine Halstead's  laugh. 

Frank  touched  the  knob,  and  heard  an  electric-bell 
ring  inside.  A  heavy  footstep  came  along  the  passage. 
He  wondered  whether  there  was  still  time  to  "do  a  guy" 
as  he  called  it  in  his  old  college  slang.  What  a  weak 

103 


104  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

fool  he  had  been  to  set  that  bell  ringing,  and  what  a  mis- 
erable wretch  he  would  look  if  he  went  in ! 

The  door  opened  and  Brandon  stood  in  the  light. 

"Hulloh,  young  feller!  So  you've  come,  have  you? 
The  ladies  have  been  taking  your  name  in  vain." 

"Look  here,  Brandon,"  said  Frank,  "I  have  changed 
my  mind.  I'm  not  a  fit  object  for  a  lady's  flat.  Say  it 
was  a  beggar,  and  let  me  bolt." 

Brandon  grinned  at  him. 

"Come  in,  man;  what  the  dickens  are  you  talking 
about?" 

He  took  his  arm  and  dragged  him  inside,  and  then 
marched  him  along  the  passage  like  a  prisoner. 

"All  right,"  said  Frank,  smiling  in  spite  of  his  ner- 
vousness. 'Til  go  quietly." 

"You'd  better,"  said  Brandon,  "or  I'll  give  you  the 
frog's  march." 

He  released  him  at  the  door  of  the  room  at  the  end 
of  the  corridor. 

"Here's  one  of  the  laggards,"  he  said. 

Frank  went  into  the  warmth  and  light  of  a  cosy  room 
to  the  sound  of  a  tinkling  piano,  and  the  quiet  hum  of 
voices.  He  was  conscious  that  several  people  were  there, 
but  he  saw  only  Katherine  Halstead,  in  a  white  dress,  who 
came  towards  him  and  took  his  hand,  and  said,  "We  had 
given  you  up  as  a  lost  soul." 

She  had  a  deep  red  rose  at  her  breast,  and  the  heat 
of  the  fire  seemed  to  have  touched  her  cheeks,  giving  to 
them  a  warmer  glow. 

She  led  Frank  by  the  hand  towards  Margaret  Hubbard 
who  was  doing  some  crochet  work  in  a  low  chair,  with  an 
electric  stand-lamp  pouring  its  white  light  upon  her. 

"Here  is  another  of  the  truants,"  said  Katherine. 

"Who  has  come  starving,  I  can  see,"  said  Margaret 
Hubbard.  "Why,  the  boy's  face  is  like  a  banshee.  Here, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  105 

put  him  by  the  fire,  and  warm  up  the  cockles  of  his  heart, 
while  I  go  and  seek  some  provender/' 

She  took  his  .hand,  and  said,  "Bless  me,  it's  as  cold 
as  a  toad.  I  suppose  that  dreadful  tyrant,  Mr.  Vicary, 
sent  you  off  to  some  horrible  haunt  when  you  ought  to 
have  been  having  dinner." 

Frank  gave  an  account  of  his  day  in  a  few  words." 

"What  cruelty !"  said  Katherine.  "A  day  in  the  police- 
court  and  motor  smash  in  the  evening.  Really,  I  shall 
have  to  speak  seriously  to  John  Vicary." 

She  looked  as  though  she  had  made  up  her  mind  to 
dismiss  her  own  Chief,  and  Luttrell  felt  comforted  for 
the  fatigue  of  his  day. 

"What  we  want,"  said  Brandon,  "is  a  society  for  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Poor  Pressmen.  It  is  a  long- 
felt  want  in  Fleet  Street.  Chris  Codrington,  there,  would 
do  famously  as  Honorary  Secretary,  on  a  private  salary. 
He  would  get  subscriptions  from  Duchesses  who  want  to 
reconstruct  their  character  and  from  Gaiety  actresses  pre- 
pared to  pay  for  a  puff." 

Codrington  was  deep  in  a  big  embracing  chair,  with  a 
cushion  behind  his  head,  and  his  face  tilted  upwards  so 
that  its  profile  was  silhouetted  in  the  red  light  of  a  lamp 
behind  him.  He  was  in  evening  dress  with  a  soft  frilled 
shirt,  and  a  coat  with  deep  lapels,  so  that  he  seemed  like 
a  figure  cut  out  of  one  of  Dendy  Sadler's  pictures  of 
Georgian  bloods.  His  eyes  were  shut  and  he  seemed 
asleep,  but  when  Brandon  spoke  he  put  up  his  hand  and 
said,  "Hush,  Brandon,  your  raucous  voice  jars  upon  the 
melody  of  my  thoughts." 

"A  pretty  egoist,  isn't  he?"  said  Brandon,  gazing  at 
him  with  a  kind  of  angry  admiration.  "I  wonder  he 
don't  hire  himself  out  as  a  peepshow  at  a  penny  gaff." 

Luttrell  found  himself  on  a  low  stool  by  the  fire  with  a 
silver  tray  on  a  coal-scuttle,  with  a  cup  of  hot  coffee 


106          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

sending  an  exquisite  fragrance  to  his  nostrils,  and  a  plate 
of  fancy  cakes  and  sweets  enticing  him  seductively, 
Mother  Hubbard  was  on  her  knees  before  him,  and  said, 
"Shut  your  eyes  and  open  your  mouth,  and  see  what  God 
will  give  you."  Frank  was  obedient,  and  God,  or  Mother 
Hubbard,  gave  him  a  sweetmeat  which  sent  a  thrill  of 
ecstasy  down  his  backbone.  He  opened  his  eyes  like  a 
man  who  has  seen  a  heavenly  vision,  and  saw  that  Mother 
Hubbard  was  preparing  another  gift  of  grace  for  him. 

"Hush,"  she  said.  "I  will  have  no  starving  men  in  my 
flat!" 

He  saw  that  she  was  in  a  black  silk  gown  cut  square 
at  the  throat;  that  her  brown  eyes  were  smiling  at  him 
with  a  motherly  light  in  them,  that  her  square,  good- 
natured  face  with  its  blunt  nose  was  as  beautiful  in  its 
ugliness  as  one  of  Rembrandt's  portraits  of  the  women  he 
loved.  Frank  wondered  why  no  man  had  ever  loved 
this  woman,  why  at  least  she  was  thirty-six  and  unmar- 
ried. Such  a  woman  was  meant  to  be  the  wife  of 
some  good  fellow  and  the  mother  of  his  children.  Mother 
Hubbard !  It  was  a  good  name  for  her. 

Katherine  Halstead  brought  him  a  cigarette,  and  put  it 
into  his  mouth  before  he  had  finished  the  sacred  sweet. 
It  was  embarrassing  but  delightful.  She  struck  a  match 
and  held  it  for  him,  and  he  looked  up  and  said,  in  his  boy- 
ish way,  "I  say,  hang  it  all,  you  mustn't  wait  on  me  like 
this.  I'm  not  used  to  this  sort  of  thing." 

"Do  as  you're  bid  and  don't  be  chid,"  said  Mother 
Hubbard.  "Kitty,  my  dear,  leave  the  child  to  me,  and 
don't  interfere." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Katherine.  "You're  enjoying  yourself, 
aren't  you !  You're  like  an  old  hen  with  a  new  chick." 

Quin,  the  dramatic  critic,  was  at  the  piano  running  his 
fingers  softly  over  the  keys.  Presently  he  began  to  sing, 
in  a  soft  tenor,  a  little  French  ballad,  light  and  dainty, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

with  a  gay  lilt,  until  the  last  verse,  when  it  went  into 
minor  with  a  pitiful  plaint. 

There  was  silence  when  he  had  finished,  and  then  Kath- 
erine  said  in  a  low  voice,  "Oh,  Quinny,  there  was  a  broken 
heart  in  that !  I  heard  it  go  crack  in  the  last  line."  She 
had  set  herself  down  on  the  floor  and  was  leaning  her 
head  against  the  piano.  Frank  thought  she  looked  in  her 
white  frock  like  one  of  Jane  Austen's  heroines — Elizabeth 
in  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

"A  poor  thing,"  said  Quin,  twisting  round  on  the  music- 
stool,  "but  mine  own." 

A  man  in  a  Norfolk  jacket  was  propped  up  against  the 
wall  with  his  knees  tucked  up,  and  a  sketching-block  on 
them.  He  was  a  dark  bullet-headed  man  with  black, 
merry  eyes  and  a  comical  mouth. 

"Keep  like  that,  Miss  Halstead,"  he  said.  "You  look 
jolly  well.  There's  a  rippin'  light  and  shade  on  that  light 
gown  of  yours." 

"I  dare  say,"  said  Katherine.  "And  if  you  could  draw 
I've  no  doubt  I  should  make  a  pretty  picture,  Finger." 

"Don't  be  cheeky,"  said  the  man,  "or  I'll  make  you 
ugly.  Oh  crickey!  If  this  don't  make  an  advertisement 
for  Bile  Beans  my  name  isn't  Ping- Pong!" 

Katherine  jumped  up  and  seizing  a  "Shilling  Album 
of  Popular  Favourites"  threw  it  at  his  head  with  unerring 
aim.  It  knocked  off  the  artist's  pince-nez,  and  then  he 
flung  the  book  back  again.  It  overturned  one  of  the  can- 
dles on  the  piano  and  smashed  its  shade.  Quin,  who  was 
singing  again  to  an  accompaniment  of  deep,  long-drawn 
chords,  puffed  the  candle  out  at  the  end  of  a  tremolo  note 
and  began  the  second  verse. 

"Who's  going  to  pay?"  cried  Miss  Hubbard. 

"It  is  a  fight  to  a  finish,"  said  the  artist,  with  set  teeth, 
catching  a  cushion  which  came  Uiirtling  from  Katherine's 
hands. 


io8          THE  STREET  OF.  ADVENTURE 

"We'll  settle  up  afterwards.     Gee-whiz !  one  to  me !" 

The  cushion  struck  Katherine  full  in  the  chest,  and 
made  her  reel  for  a  moment. 

Frank  rose  from  his  seat  and  said,  "Isn't  this  going  too 
far?"  His  fists  closed  and  he  made  a  movement  as  if 
he  were  going  to  punch  the  artist's  head.  Miss  Hub- 
bard  laughed  quietly  and  went  on  with  the  crochet  work, 
which  she  was  doing  with  nimble  fingers  as  she  sat  in  a 
high-backed  wooden  chair. 

"It's  all  right.  They  will  probably  break  up  the  flat, 
but  Kitty  would  rather  die  than  give  in." 

Christopher  Codrington  opened  his  eyes  and  watched 
the  struggle  with  languid  interest. 

"I  don't  approve  of  this  horse-play,"  he  said.  "It  is 
so  extremely  bad  for  one's  clothes." 

Brandon,  the  crime  expert,  was  playing  a  game  of  chess 
opposite  a  tiny  man  with  a  freckled  face  and  a  fair,  fluffy 
moustache  brushed  upwards,  who  had  his  head  down 
close  to  the  board,  at  which  he  stared  with  stabbing,  steel- 
grey  eyes  and  a  ferocious  frown.  The  combat  came  near 
them — Katherine  was  attacking  the  artist  by  assault  and 
battery,  with  the  cushion  held  tightly  in  both  hands.  Her 
face  was  flushed  and  her  eyes  were  lighted  with  the  fierce 
joy  of  onslaught.  The  artist  was  making  a  strategic 
move  to  the  rear,  with  a  right  arm  held  up  in  defence. 
Suddenly  he  backed  right  on  to  the  chess-table,  and  sent 
the  chessmen  bouncing  off  the  board  in  all  directions, 
while  the  table  collapsed  under  him.  Katherine  was  on 
him  in  a  moment  stuffing  her  pillow  over  his  head  and 
face,  regardless  of  the  yell  of  rage  from  Brandon  and  his 
companion. 

"Ten  thousand  devils,"  said  Brandon.  "I  should  have 
checkmated  him  in  three  moves." 

"What !"  cried  the  miniature  man,  whom  Luttrell  after- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  109 

wards  knew  to  be  the  most  famous  sporting  editor  in 
London.  "I  had  all  the  running  from  the  start !" 

They  quarrelled  violently  over  the  split  chessmen. 
Katherine  was  pummelling  the  head  of  her  victim,  who 
sat  grovelling  in  the  wreckage  and  pleading  for  mercy 
with  half -suffocated  laughter  and  plaintive  groans.  As 
an  accompaniment  to  the  din  could  be  heard  Quin's  deep 
chords  on  the  piano,  and  a  love-song,  thrilling  in  low  and 
passionate  strains.  Miss  Hubbard  had  stopped  her  cro- 
chet, and  was  standing  up  with  one  hand  on  Luttrell's 
shoulder,  laughing  excitedly. 

"Is  this  game  often  played?"  said  Luttrell,  who  was 
leaning  forward  also,  gazing  at  the  flushed  face,  the  lithe, 
graceful  figure,  the  flashing,  exultant  eyes  of  Katherine 
Halstead.  He  drew  a  deep  breath,  and  his  pulse  seemed 
to  thump  in  his  brain.  The  girl  was  like  a  young  Greek 
goddess  taking  divine  vengeance.  But  he  felt  uneasy. 
There  was  something  which  rather  hurt  him  in  the  sight 
of  this  struggle  between  Katherine  and  the  artist.  He 
would  not  have  minded,  perhaps,  if  he  had  been  the  artist, 
who  had  seized  one  of  her  wrists  while  she  pummelled 
him  with  the  silk  pillow  in  her  right  hand. 

"Oh,  it's  good  to  laugh/'  said  Miss  Hubbard,  surveying 
the  scene  with  beaming  eyes,  although  one  leg  of  her 
chess-table  was  lying  loose.  "If  it  wouldn't  spoil  sport,  I 
would  like  to  join  in." 

Codrington  rose  quietly  and  went  over  to  Katherine, 
taking  her  other  wrist  as  she  was  about  to  give  the  death- 
blow to  her  quarry. 

"The  quality  of  mercy  is  not  strained,"  he  said.  "It 
droppeth  as  the  gentle  dew  from  Heaven  upon  the  place 
beneath." 

"Let  me  go,  Chris,"  said  Katherine.     "I  will  hit  you." 

"Hit  one  of  your  own  size,  fair  lady,"  said  Codring- 
ton. He  took  both  her  wrists  now  as  the  artist  struggled 


no  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

to  his  feet,  and  though  she  tried  to  release  herself,  held 
her  tight,  and  smiled  down  at  her  in  his  pale,  sardonic 
way. 

"You  cannot  go,"  he  said.  "You  cannot  escape  from 
me,  wild  bird." 

Katherine  Halstead's  face  flamed  scarlet  and  then  went 
rather  white. 

"Chris,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice.  "Let  go  of  my  hands, 
or  I  shall  be  really  angry." 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  to  Luttrell  that  the  girl's  eyes 
had  filled  with  tears,  and  as  Codrington  released  her  she 
put  both  hands  to  her  breast,  panting  a  little. 

But  then  she  turned  to  the  artist  and  laughed  at  him, 
so  that  Luttrell  knew  he  had  been  mistaken  about  her 
tears.  But  how  quick  and  transient  were  her  moods ! 

"Confess  you  were  badly  beaten,  Mr.  Finger." 

"I  give  up  the  physical  force  argument  against  women's 
suffrage,"  said  the  artist,  smoothing  his  crumpled  hair. 
"There's  nothing  in  it.  Men  are  mere  weaklings  com- 
pared with  modern  females  who  call  themselves  women." 

There  was  a  new  voice  in  the  room.  It  came  from  the 
doorway,  and  said — 

"God  bless  you,  my  children.  Peace  be  unto  this 
house." 

There  was  a  sudden  silence.  Quin  stopped  playing 
with  a  jumble  of  notes  as  his  hands  rested  on  the  keys. 
Miss  Hubbard  turned  her  head  sharply  towards  the  door, 
and  then  with  a  little  gasp  sat  down  suddenly. 

"Well-I-never-did-you-ever !"  she  said. 

All  eyes  were  turned  upon  a  man  who  stood  in  the  door- 
way. 

It  was  a  short  man  in  a  grey  suit,  with  a  bowler  hat  in 
his  hand,  and  a  big  brown-paper  parcel  under  his  arm. 
The  light  from  a  hanging  electric  light  gleamed  upon  a 
high  forehead  and  a  head  going  bald  on  top.  He  had  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  in 

clean-shaven  face  of  a  comic  actor,  with  a  whimsical 
mouth,  and  the  blue-grey  eyes  of  a  poet  or  a  philosopher, 
rather  wistful  and  dreamy  and  sad  in  spite  of  the  smile 
in  them.  He  wore  a  low  collar  round  a  rather  bony  neck, 
and  a  yellow  tie;  his  grey  trousers  were  baggy  at  the 
knees,  and  he  had  heavy  boots  on.  At  the  first  glimpse 
he  looked  like  a  music-hall  "artiste"  who  would  probably 
produce  a  tame  rabbit,  or  some  conjuring  boxes,  from 
his  brown-paper  bag.  At  the  second  glimpse  he  looked 
like  a  social  idealist  who  lives  on  brown  bread  and  cod- 
liver  oil.  At  the  third  glimpse  it  was  clear  that  he  was  a 
gentleman,  and  probably  a  scholar.  There  was  intellect 
behind  his  huge  forehead,  and  the  indefinable  imprint  of 
thought  and  study  on  his  serio-comic  face. 

"In  the  name  of  all  that  is  wonderful,"  said  Brandon, 
"how  did  you  get  here?  Three  days  ago  I  saw  your 
name  under  a  telegram  from  Turkey." 

"Hush.  Not  a  word !"  said  the  little  man.  "I  am  in 
Turkey  at  the  present  moment,  pulling  the  wires  of  the 
new  Constitution.  I  am  not  due  in  London  for  another 
twenty-four  hours.  It  is  only  my  ethereal  being  which 
has  come  to  wish  Mother  Hubbard  many  happy  returns 
of  the  day. 

He  went  over  to  Margaret  Hubbard  and  took  both  her 
hands  as  she  rose  and  came  towards  him. 

"Dear  Mother  Hubbard,"  he  said,  "I  have  bribed  Cus- 
tom House  officials,  and  the  captains  of  steam-boats,  and 
had  desperate  adventures  to  escape  from  the  Young 
Turks  and  Persian  poison-mongers  in  order  to  be  in  time 
for  your  birthday  party." 

"Well  done  !"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.     "Well  done !" 

The  man  and  woman  looked  at  each  other  with  an  ex- 
pression of  frank  comradeship. 

Was  this  Mother  Hubbard's  romance?  thought  Frank 
Luttrell. 


H2  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Katherine  had  clasped  the  little  man's  arm. 

"And  what  about  me?"  she  said. 

"What,  little  Kitty?  Not  in  bed  yet?  Snakes  alive! 
what  is  Mother  Hubbard  thinking  about  ?"  He  took  her 
hand  and  kissed  it  with  old-fashioned  gallantry. 

"My  dear,"  he  said,  "you  grow  prettier  every  time  I  see 
you." 

The  men  had  crowded  round  him,  and  he  had  a  hand- 
clasp for  each  and  a  word  or  two. 

"What,  Brandon!  how  many  murderers  have  you 
tracked  down  lately,  you  ghoulish  old  corpse-hunter? 
And,  Codrington !  when  are  you  going  to  stop  growing, 
man?  Sure  now,  boys,  and  don't  he  look  beautiful  to- 
night! Georgian  furniture,  eh  what?  And  there  is 
queer  Mr.  Quin,  if  my  eyes  deceive  me  not !  Still  sing- 
ing amorous  ballads  of  his  own  concoction,  inspired  by 
his  latest  little  Gaiety  girl.  Finger,  the  lightning  artist 
.  .  .  and  little  Birkenshaw,  greatest  of  sportsmen.  .  .  . 
Well  done!  This  is  just  the  merry  party  I  saw  in  my 
mind's  eye  from  Constantinople  to  Blackf riars  Bridge." 

He  turned  to  Katherine.  "My  dear,  will  you  unwrap 
that  pedlar's  pack?  I  come  with  gifts  from  the  East, 
rubbish  gathered  in  Oriental  bazaars,  thoroughly  disin- 
fected and  duty  paid." 

Katherine  snipped  at  the  string,  bringing  upon  herself 
a  rebuke  from  Margaret  Hubbard,  who  had  a  moral  ob- 
jection to  cutting  a  knot.  She  went  down  on  her  knees 
and  the  men  gathered  round. 

The  brown  paper  was  unwrapped  and  in  the  folds  of  a 
beautiful  Persian  rug,  of  exquisite  colour-harmonies,  lay 
a  number  of  trinkets. 

"Oh,  oh!"  cried  Katherine,  holding  up  a  string  of 
pearls.  "Here's  a  pretty  thing,  now  what  shall  we  do 
with  this  pretty  thing?" 

"What  else  but  put  it  round  a  pretty  neck?"  said  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  113 

newcomer,  and  taking  it  from  her  he  suited  the  action 
to  the  word. 

"For  me  ?"  cried  Katherine ;  "or  for  the  princess  of  an 
Arabian  Night?" 

As  Katherine  was  on  her  knees  on  the  carpet,  with  the 
trinkets  scattered  about  her  and  the  rope  of  pearls  round 
her  neck — in  her  white  dress  with  its  little  waves  of  tucks 
and  lace,  her  face  glowing  with  excitement,  and  deepened 
in  colour  by  the  red  firelight — she  seemed  to  Frank  Lut- 
trell  like  Marguerite  in  the  Jewel  Scene.  And  for  a 
moment  as  Christopher  Codrington  stood  by  her  side, 
with  an  arm  on  the  mantelpiece,  his  thin  lips  curved  into 
a  smile,  as  he  looked  down  upon  her,  it  seemed  to  Frank 
also  that  Mephistopheles  was  not  far  away.  He  won- 
dered why  Codrington's  tall  figure  and  cold,  classical 
face  sometimes  gave  him  a  "creepy"  sensation  and  filled 
him  with  an  unaccountable  uneasiness. 

"I  had  an  impression,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard  serious- 
ly, "that  this  was  my  birthday  party,  Mr.  Edmund  Grat- 
tan." 

"True  for  you,  ma'am,  Miss  Katherine  is  quite  out  of 
order.  Permit  me  to  lay  this  at  your  feet.  It  is  the 
magic  carpet  of  Baghdad.  You  have  but  to  sit  on  the 
cluster  of  roses  with  your  toes  pointing  to  the  east,  and 
you  shall  be  conveyed  to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth, 
as  soon  as  the  wish  is  shaped  within  your  spirit.  Sure 
now,  and  I'm  not  telling  you  any  untruth." 

On  the  Persian  rug  were  some  sandal  boxes,  a  curious 
metal  charm,  some  soft  silks  and  gold  thread  embroid- 
eries, and  the  Irishman  told  the  company  to  take  their 
choice  in  return  for  a  cigarette  and  a  cup  of  Mother  Hub- 
bard's  coffee,  which  he  said  was  always  more  fragrant 
than  any  he  had  tasted  in  Constantinople  itself. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  company  had  arranged  itself  into 
different  grouping.  Codrington  lay  at  full  length  before 


114  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

the  fire,  and  Quin  sat  on  the  coal-scuttle  with  his  knees 
tucked  up,  like  Robin  Good  fellow  on  a  toadstool.  Kath- 
erine  was  sitting  on  the  Persian  carpet  with  one  arm  on 
the  knee  of  Edmund  Grattan  the  Irishman,  who  held  the 
central  position  before  the  fire  in  a  low-backed  chair. 
Brandon,  the  criminologist,  was  perched  on  a  swinging 
bookcase  kicking  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  with  his 
heels,  while  his  grave,  youngish-old  face,  on  which  the 
memory  of  some  tragedy  seemed  always  brooding,  was 
lighted  from  above  by  the  candles,  with  deep  shadows 
under  the  eyes.  Birkenshaw,  the  sporting  editor,  sat 
astride  a  Chippendale  chair — the  only  one  of  its  kind  in 
the  room  which  had  obviously  been  furnished  out  of  sec- 
ond-hand shops — like  D'Artagnan  on  his  Gascon  colt. 
Finger,  the  artist,  was  lying  on  his  stomach  with  his  body 
underneath  the  Chippendale  chair,  his  elbows  dug  into 
the  floor,  and  his  black  bullet  head  and  square  jowl  sup- 
ported in  the  palms  of  his  hands.  Luttrell  himself  was 
on  the  other  side  of  Katherine,  on  the  music-stool,  and 
Margaret  Hubbard  moved  about  in  her  quiet,  thoughtful, 
practical  way,  getting  coffee  for  Grattan,  and  sandwiches, 
chocolate,  toffee,  and  tarts  for  the  other  men.  Katherine 
was  the  Mary,  and  Margaret  the  Martha,  of  that  flat, 
and  Luttrell's  eyes  wandered  from  one  to  the  other,  read- 
ing the  character  of  these  two  women  who  had  allowed 
him  to  enter  the  circle  of  their  lives.  Once  or  twice,  as 
Margaret  passed,  Katherine  caressed  her  hand,  and  then 
as  the  elder  of  the  two  stayed  for  a  moment  by  her  side 
Katherine  put  her  arm  round  her  waist  and  snuggled  her 
brown  head  against  the  soft  folds  of  Margaret's  black  silk 
dress.  Mother  Hubbard,  as  she  was  called,  stooped  down 
and  kissed  Katherine's  hair,  and  Luttrell  was  strangely 
moved  by  that  simple  message.  He  had  already  seen  how 
Margaret  Hubbard's  face  was  illuminated  by  a  kind  of 
mysterious  love  when  she  looked  at  the  younger  girl.  He 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  115 

was  glad  that  Katherine  lived  with  Mother  Hubbard. 
There  was  protection  and  safety  and  a  sanctuary  for  a 
restless  heart  in  the  guardianship  of  that  woman  with  the 
steady  brown  eyes  and  the  ugly-beautiful  face.  Kather- 
ine disquieted  him,  made  his  pulse  beat  quickly,  made  him 
almost  wish  that  he  had  not  come  to  this  birthday  party. 
The  thought  of  her  pillow  fight  with  Finger  the  artist  dis- 
turbed him.  The  fellow  had  treated  her  roughly,  as 
though  she  were  a  torn-boy  sister.  He  did  not  under- 
stand that  momentary  scene  when  Codrington  had  held 
her  wrists  and  smiled  at  her  in  his  peculiar  way  until 
she  had  become  angry,  really  angry,  with  sparks  in  her 
eyes,  and  then,  as  it  seemed — afraid.  He  hardly  liked  to 
see  her  now  with  her  arm  on  Grattan's  knee,  as  though 
he  were  her  elder  brother.  And  yet,  there  was  no  trace 
of  vulgarity  in  her  manner,  no  faintest  suggestion  of 
coarseness.  She  had  the  purity  and  the  innocence  and 
the  carelessness  of  a  girl  of  fifteen  in  short  frocks,  who 
is  not  ashamed  of  her  long  legs  and  black  stockings,  and 
does  not  give  a  thought  to  the  proprieties.  Yet  she  was 
not  like  a  young  girl  in  her  swiftly-changing  moods  that 
seemed  to  trouble  her  spirit  like  a  water-brook  stirred 
by  the  lights  and  shadows  of  a  wind-swept  sky.  One 
moment  she  was  gay,  with  laughing  merriment,  and  then 
wistful,  or  scornful,  or  with  a  melting  tenderness,  or 
dreamy,  or  excited,  or  caressing,  as  the  conversation 
eddied  and  swirled  round  many  subjects,  or  was  inter- 
rupted by  short  silences. 

Luttrell  listened  to  that  conversation,  taking  no  part  in 
it.  Edmund  Grattan,  the  Irishman,  was  the  leader.  He 
told  stories  of  strange  adventures  which  had  happened 
to  him  during  recent  months  in  Turkey  and  Persia  and 
the  Balkans,  where  he  seemed  to  have  been  the  onlooker 
of  seething  movements  of  revolt  and  reform.  He  spoke 
vividly,  with  a  quiet  humour  and  with  an  undercurrent 


Ii6  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

of  enthusiasm  for  the  spirit  of  liberty.  He  told  of  Palace 
intrigues,  of  mob  passion,  and  passion  of  another  kind 
in  which  Eastern  men  and  women  had  been  scorched  in 
the  hot  fire  of  love.  He  described  adventures  in  narrow 
alleys  between  whitewashed  houses  with  high  windows, 
and  in  taverns  where  quick  words  had  been  followed  by 
sharp  blows,  and  where  cheap  blood  had  flowed  as  well 
as  cheap  wine.  As  he  spoke  the  flat  in  Shaftesbury  Ave- 
nue was  filled  with  garishly-coloured  pictures  of  Oriental 
scenes,  in  which  silken  turbans  and  robes  of  gold-shot 
silk  and  dark  liquid  eyes  behind  transparent  veils,  and 
jewel-hilted  daggers,  and  the  red  fez  of  Turkish  officers, 
and  moving  masses  of  dark-skinned  people  in  the  fantas- 
tic, many-coloured  costumes  of  Eastern  bazaars,  passed 
before  the  imagination  of  those  who  listened  to  the  Irish- 
man's words.  Then,  after  the  grim  tale  of  a  tragedy  in 
which  Grattan  had  stumbled  over  the  white  corpse  of  a 
beautiful  Persian  woman  in  a  room  hung  with  rich  tap- 
estries and  fragrant  with  the  scent  of  sandal  wood — it 
seemed  like  a  new  chapter  of  The  Thousand  and  One 
Nights — the  conversation  became  general,  and  changed 
from  Eastern  politics  and  drama  to  the  street  of  adven- 
ture at  home.  Luttrell  knew  none  of  the  personalities 
discussed  except  those  of  Silas  Bellamy  and  Vicary,  and 
he  listened,  not  always  understanding,  to  the  strange 
and  fascinating  jargon  of  newspaper  life.  Whenever 
pressmen  are  gathered  together  they  talk  "shop."  That 
is  the  dullest  kind  of  talk  in  most  ways  of  business,  but 
the  "shop"  of  newspaper  men  deals  with  the  humanities 
and  human  nature.  It  is  the  technical  language  of  men 
who  are  behind  the  scenes  of  high  politics  and  low  crimes, 
and  all  contemporary  history.  It  is  the  argot  of  men  who 
belong  to  a  secret  brotherhood,  in  which  there  are  pass- 
words unknown  to  the  outside  world.  It  is  the  "shop" 
of  men  and  women  who  are  insulted  by  the  flunkeys  of  so- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  117 

ciety,  but  who  know  the  secrets  of  courts;  who  are  un- 
protected by  the  common  rights  of  justice,  who  have 
no  security  of  tenure,  who  are  the  voluntary  victims  of 
the  most  cruel  form  of  individualism.  It  is  the  language 
of  a  world  where  reputations  are  quickly  made  and  quick- 
ly lost,  where  intellects  and  temperaments  are  bought  by 
men  having  none  of  either,  and  used  up,  until  the  dry 
husks  of  what  were  once  throbbing  brains  and  hearts  are 
thrown  upon  the  scrap-heap  of  broken  lives. 

Grattan  had  only  been  abroad  for  three  months,  but 
during  that  time  newspapers  had  changed  hands,  new 
men  sat  in  the  seats  of  the  mighty,  old  friends  had 
gone  under,  one  warm  heart  was  as  cold  as  the  clay  that 
lay  upon  it,  a  baker's  dozen  had  got  the  "sack"  from  one 
"rag."  But  there  had  been  some  fun.  Brandon  had  put 
another  man's  head  into  a  collar  of  hemp.  He  had  made  a 
present  of  his  clues  to  the  police,  who,  as  usual,  were  not 
grateful.  Brandon  also  had  a  new  and  true  story  to  tell. 
It  was  called  "The  Coffin  that  came  Back."  Katherine 
objected  to  it  so  late  at  night.  Christopher  Codrington 
had  actually  got  a  big  scoop.  How  he  had  obtained  the 
secret  of  the  new  War  Office  scheme  was  a  romance  not 
to  be  told  to  walls  which  had  ears.  Naturally  there  was 
a  beautiful  lady  in  the  case.  Silas  Bellamy  was  still 
smiling  and  polishing  his  nails,  but  there  was  an  uneasy 
feeling  in  the  office  that  all  was  not  well  with  the  Rag. 
The  ads.  were  dropping  off  and  the  Proprietor  looked  like 
Hamlet  in  search  of  his  uncle.  There  was  a  low  tem- 
perature at  the  Club.  The  dismissal  of  Billy  Bramshaw 
from  the  rival  show  was  about  the  most  damnable  thing 
that  had  ever  been  done  in  the  street.  He  was  now 
drinking  himself  to  death. 

"It  makes  me  weep  tears  of  rage,"  said  Katherine. 

Edmund  Grattan  leant  forward  on  his  elbows  and 
stared  into  the  fire. 


n8  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Poor  old  Billy !"  he  said.  "One  of  the  best !  I  must 
have  a  talk  with  him.  Lifting  the  elbow,  is  he  ?" 

He  seemed  upset  by  the  last  story,  and  a  curious  look 
of  sadness  and  shame  crept  into  his  face.  Luttrell  knew 
afterwards  the  meaning  of  that  look.  Grattan  himself 
sometimes  drank  himself  to  the  edge  of  death.  There 
were  periods  when  he  disappeared  suddenly  for  a  week  or 
so.  Nobody  knew  where  he  was,  and  nobody  asked.  Or 
if  anybody  asked,  being  a  newcomer,  he  was  told  that 
"Grattan  was  looking  for  his  wife."  She  had  gone  from 
him  one  night  fifteen  years  ago,  and  he  went  to  find  her 
in  low  drinking  bars  down  East,  where  with  his  head 
on  his  arms,  and  with  bloodshot  eyes,  he  saw  her  again 
indier  beauty,  and  heard  the  voice  that  was  like  the  run- 
ning water  of  the  silver  brooks  of  Ballyhinton,  and 
drowned  his  soul  in  the  silent  pools  of  the  eyes  that  had 
been  the  mirrors  of  his  heart,  fifteen  years  ago. 

"Quick !"  he  said,  "let  us  put  the  thought  of  such  things 
away  from  us.  It  is  Mother  Hubbard's  birthday,  bless 
her  dear  soul.  Draw  up  closer  to  the  fire,  boys.  We'll 
be  little  children  again,  and  tell  fairy-tales,  and  forget  the 
damned  old  world  outside  the  window  curtains." 

"Oh,"  said  Katherine.  "There  are  no  fairy-tales  like 
yours.  They  bewitch  the  little  white  soul  out  of  my 
body." 

"I  will  tell  you  the  tale  of  Etain,"  said  Grattan.  "I 
heard  it  first  to  the  music  of  a  spinning-wheel  in  a  cabin 
of  Connemara,  where  a  woman  who  was  my  mother  sat 
in  a  circle  of  six  bare-legged  girls  and  one  boy,  who  was 
myself." 

"Eochaid,  the  glorious  son  of  Finn,  who  was  supreme 
lord  over  Erin,  once  saw  a  maid  at  the  brink  of  a  spring. 
A  clear  comb  of  silver  was  held  in  her  hand,  the  comb 
was  adorned  with  gold,  and  near  her  as  for  washing  was 
a  basin  of  silver  whereon  four  birds  had  been  chased.  A 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  119 

tunic  she  wore  with  a  long  hood ;  it  was  stiff  and  glossy 
with  green  silk  beneath  red  embroidery  of  gold,  and  it 
was  clasped  over  her  breasts  with  marvellously-wrought 
clasps  of  silver  and  gold,  so  that  men  saw  the  bright  gold 
and  the  green  silk  flashing  against  the  sun.  On  her  head 
were  two  tresses  of  golden  hair,  and  each  tress  had  been 
plaited  into  four  strands;  at  the  end  of  each  strand  was 
a  little  ball  of  gold.  And  there  was  that  maiden  undoing 
her  hair  that  she  might  wash  it,  her  two  arms  stuck  out 
through  the  armholes  of  her  smock.  Each  of  her  two 
arms  was  as  white  as  the  snow  of  a  single  night,  and  each 
of  her  cheeks  was  as  rosy  as  the  foxglove.  Even  and 
small  were  the  teeth  in  her  head,  and  they  shone  lik'i 
pearls.  Her  eyes  were  blue  as  a  hyacinth,  her  lips  deli- 
cate and  crimson ;  very  high  and  soft  and  white  were  her 
shoulders.  Tender,  polished  and  white  were  her  wrists ; 
her  fingers  long  and  of  great  whiteness;  her  nails  were 
beautiful  and  pink.  White  as  the  snow,  or  as  the  foam 
of  the  wave,  was  her  side;  long  was  it,  slender,  and  as 
soft  as  silk.  Smooth  and  white  were  her  thighs;  her 
knees  were  round  and  firm  and  white;  her  ankles  were 
as  straight  as  the  rule  of  a  carpenter.  Her  feet  were 
slim;  evenly  set  were  her  eyes;  her  eyebrows  were  of  a 
bluish-black,  such  as  you  see  upon  the  shell  of  a  beetle. 
Never  a  maid  fairer  than  she,  or  more  worthy  of  love, 
was  till  then  seen  by  the  eyes  of  men;  and  it  seemed  to 
them  that  she  must  be  one  of  those  who  have  come  from 
the  fairy  mounds." 

"I  must  set  that  to  music,"  said  Quin. 

"It  is  a  poem,"  said  Codrington ;  "I  must  make  a  note 
of  some  of  those  similes,  'Her  eyes  were  as  blue  as  a  hya- 
cinth.' That  reminds  me  of  someone  I  know."  He 
turned  on  his  side  as  he  lay  on  the  rug  before  the  fire  and 
looked  over  at  Katherine. 


120  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

She  drooped  her  eyes  and  said,  "Go  on,  what  happened 
to  the  beautiful  Etain?" 

Margaret  Hubbard  raised  her  hand. 

"No,"  she  said,  "don't  go  on,  there  is  the  telephone." 

"I  guess  Vicary  is  at  the  end  of  the  wire,"  said  Bran- 
don. "That's  to  fetch  me  to  a  murder.  I'll  be  hanged 
if  I  go." 

Margaret  Hubbard  had  the  receiver  to  her  ear. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "they  are  all  here.  .  .  .  What,  all 
three  of  them?  Oh,  heartless!  .  .  .  Poor  boys.  .  .  . 
Oh  yes,  /  know.  Loyalty  to  the  Rag,  and  all  that.  A 
precious  lot  of  good  it  does  them!  .  .  .  Oh,  you  may 
trust  me !" 

She  laughed,  banged  down  the  receiver,  and  clapped  her 
hands. 

"Mr.  Brandon,  Mr.  Codrington,  Mr.  Luttrell !" 

The  three  men  stood  up. 

"What's  happened?"  said  Codrington,  wiping  a  little 
moisture  off  his  high  forehead. 

"There's  a  tremendous  fire  at  New  Cross.  You  must 
go  down  at  once.  Vicary  says  it's  a  big  story,  and  you 
will  all  be  wanted.  He  will  have  the  motor-car  ready  for 
you  as  soon  as  you  get  round  to  the  Rag" 

Brandon  was  already  in  his  overcoat,  which  he  had 
dashed  for  at  the  word  "fire."  Codrington  was  more 
leisurely,  and  maintained  his  cold  dignity. 

"Come  on,  Luttrell,"  said  Brandon. 

Margaret  Hubbard  fled  into  the  next  room,  and  brought 
out  one  silk  and  two  woollen  scarves.  She  gave  the  silk 
one  to  Katherine.  "Tie  that  round  Mr.  Luttrell's  neck," 
she  said,  and  set  the  example  by  swathing  Codrington  in 
the  woollen  wrap. 

Katherine  darted  to  Frank  and  wound  the  scarf  round 
his  throat,  tucking  the  ends  of  it  over  his  chest.  Her 
face  was  close  to  his,  and  he  drank  in  the  fragrance  of 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  121 

her  breath.  Her  white  hands  were  patting  down  the 
silken  tie,  and  she  drew  him  closer  towards  her  as  she 
pulled  the  ends  tighter.  Frank  thought  of  the  music  of 
Grattan's  fairy-tale. 

"Tender,  polished  and  white  were  her  wrists,  her  fin- 
gers long  and  of  great  whiteness,  her  nails  were  beautiful 
and  pink." 

For  a  moment  he  was  intoxicated.  He  would  have 
given  his  soul  to  clasp  his  arms  about  that  girl  who  was 
so  close  to  his  breast.  She  was  Etain,  of  whom  Grattan 
had  told  them.  "Never  a  maid  fairer  than  she,  or  more 
worthy  of  love."  He  wanted  to  lift  up  the  soft  chin  and 
look  into  the  eyes  that  were  "blue  as  a  hyacinth,"  and  to 
kiss  those  lips  "delicate  and  crimson."  For  one  moment 
Frank  Luttrell  went  mad,  as  many  men  do,  for  one  mo- 
ment, which  gives  them  time  enough  to  commit  a  murder, 
or  to  conceive  a  poem. 

"Thanks  awfully/'  he  said,  "you  are  very  good." 

"It  is  frightfully  cold  outside,"  said  Katherine.  "And 
you  have  been  sitting  near  the  fire." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  kind  of  pitiful  concern. 

"I  hope  you  are  not  delicate  on  the  chest." 

"Good  lord,  no,"  said  Frank.     "I  say,  what's  all  this?" 

Margaret  Hubbard  was  filling  his  pockets  with  biscuits 
and  sweets.  The  pockets  of  Codrington  and  Brandon 
were  already  bulging. 

"They  will  be  a  comfort  to  you.  Perhaps  you'll  get 
nothing  to  eat  until  the  morning."  She  clapped  her  hands 
again.  "Now  off  with  you !  I  gave  my  word  of  honour 
to  Vicary.  Hark-away !" 

Grattan,  Quin,  Finger  and  Birkenshaw  were  standing 
with  their  backs  to  the  fire,  laughing  at  the  scene  of 
flurry. 

"The  same  old  game,"  said  Grattan.  "Truth,  and  it's 
a  wonderful  life !" 


122  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

As  they  went  out  of  the  flat,  with  Margaret  Hubbard  at 
the  door,  Codrington  lingered  behind  for  a  moment  in  the 
passage,  and  bent  down  to  kiss  Katherine.  She  seemed 
reluctant,  and  held  her  face  half  turned  away,  but  Cod- 
rington touched  her  cheek  with  his  lips.  Frank  Luttrell 
turned  away  from  the  light  in  the  flat  and  stumbled  down 
the  dark  stairway. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

I  THINK  few  men  were  ever  so  quickly  inoculated  with 
the  subtle  poison  of  Fleet  Street  as  young  Frank  Luttrellj 
His  temperament  could  not  withstand  it,  and  I  had  the 
melancholy  satisfaction  of  seeing  that  all  my  forebodings 
about  him  were  realised.  To  those  who  have  never  lived 
in  the  Street  of  Adventure,  having  only  passed  down  its 
highway  to  St.  Paul's  or  Charing  Cross,  it  is  difficult  to 
explain  the  effect  which  its  atmosphere  has  upon  educated 
men  of  highly- strung  temperament.  It  produces  some- 
thing, of  the  same  symptoms  as  the  drug  habit.  The  vic- 
tim loathes  the  poison,  but  craves  for  it.  He  knows  that 
he  is  yielding  to  a  habit  of  life  which  will  inevitably  drag 
him  down,  and  he  is  filled  with  self-pity  and  remorse ;  but 
if  the  phial  is  withheld  from  him  he  becomes  feverish, 
restless  and  miserable.  As  with  the  opium-smoker  all  his 
higher  instincts  tell  him  to  avoid  his  evil  haunts.  He 
knows  that  the  temporary  thrill  of  excitement  will  be  fol- 
lowed by  deadly  depression,  and  by  the  degradation  of  his 
intellect  and  imagination,  and  that  his  will-power  will  be 
inevitably  weakened  so  that  at  last  it  will  be  impossible 
to  break  or  attempt  to  break  his  habit  of  life.  Such  a 
simile  would  be  laughed  at  by  men  who  have  breathed 
the  atmosphere  of  Fleet  Street  all  their  working  lives. 
They  have  never  known  the  purer  air.  They  have  been 
so  long  fettered  that  at  last  like  enslaved  animals  they  lick 
their  chains. 

But  Frank  was  one  who  had  been  brought  up  on  the 
mountain-tops,  figuratively  as  regards  education  and 
ideals;  literally  among  green  fields  far  away  from  Fleet 

123 


124  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Street,  in  the  heart  of  the  country,  among  simple  souls,  in 
an  environment  of  beauty,  in  the  peace  of  nature's  soli- 
tudes. He  had  drunk  deep  of  the  spiritual  wine  that  is 
in  the  holy  wells  of  life.  His  mother  had  first  held  the 
cup  to  his  lips  when  as  a  small  boy  lying  on  the  old  black 
bearskin  by  the  Rectory  fire  she  had  told  him  stories  of 
saints  and  heroes  and  the  gentlemen  of  history.  His 
father  had  given  him  the  key  to  the  wine-chest  of  the 
divine  vintage  when  he  had  unlocked  the  glass  cases  of 
his  book-shelves  and  said,  "Frank,  my  boy,  here  is  the 
wisdom  of  the  world,  and  of  all  ages.  I  have  read  all 
these  books — some  of  them  a  hundred  times — and  I  envy 
you  because  you  have  read  none  of  them.  I  would  give 
much — how  much  I  wonder  ? — to  begin  the  banquet  with 
the  thirst  of  youth!"  Frank  had  read  many  of  those 
books,  beginning  with  The  Thousand  cmd  One  Nights,  in 
the  fork  of  the  oldest  apple-tree  in  the  Rectory  orchard, 
in  the  hayloft  above  the  barn  and  in  his  own  small  bed- 
room, where  a  shelf  put  up  by  his  own  hands  held  his  own 
cherished  volumes,  which  at  every  Christmas  and  every 
birthday  increased  in  number.  Then,  as  a  small  boy  with 
big,  serious  eyes  and  curls  about  his  head,  he  had  dreamed 
of  writing  books  which  other  boys  would  put  under  their 
pillows  at  night.  Later,  while  the  years  passed,  he  had 
gone  wandering  through  the  enchanted  wood  of  knowl- 
edge and  fancy,  where  poets  sang  to  him  and  wizards 
weaved  their  spells  about  him ;  where  he  plucked  flowers 
of  many  colours  and  good  fruit.  Sometimes  he  had 
pricked  his  fingers  with  sharp  thorns,  and  pulled  up  weeds 
thinking  they  were  flowers,  and  had  lost  his  way  in  dark 
and  noisome  places  from  which  he  shrank  back  shudder- 
ing. But  then  he  had  gone  on  seeing  bright  visions  be- 
fore him,  dreaming  gay  dreams,  seeking  the  spirit  of 
beauty  with  her  glistening  skirts  and  the  golden  glamour 
of  her  divine  presence.  At  Oxford  he  left  the  enchanted 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  125 

wood  behind,  though  its  memories  and  its  visions  were 
unforgettable.  He  came  face  to  face  with  some  of  the 
actualities  of  life  and  grappled  or  dodged  the  demons  of 
doubt.  But  at  Oxford  and  in  the  Abbey  School  of 
King's  Marshwood  he  had  still  been  an  idealist.  He  lived 
more  with  books  than  with  men,  with  books  which  rilled 
him  with  a  new  enthusiasm  for  the  music  of  thought  and 
words,  for  the  fine  perfection  of  a  polished  phrase,  for 
the  mystical  beauty  which  lies  beyond  the  reach  of  art. 
In  his  rooms  he  had  attempted  to  express,  feebly  and 
unsuccessfully  at  first,  something  of  his  own  tempera- 
ment, groping  his  way  to  the  heart  of  his  own  mystery. 
He  tried  to  hold  some  of  the  strange,  thrilling  moments 
which  at  the  sight  of  a  sunset  over  the  Abbey  Tower,  or 
in  the  silence  of  a  wood,  or  on  a  hill  top  where  the  birds 
rose  singing  from  the  grass,  stirred  his  senses  with  emo- 
tions which  he  could  only  dimly  understand.  Gradually 
the  art  of  expression  caught  hold  of  him.  He  experi-i 
enced  the  joy  of  technique.  He  became  an  adventurer 
with  words  and  ideas.  With  the  audacity  of  youth,  yet 
not  without  humility,  he  began  to  believe  that  he  might 
one  day  take  a  place  in  the  world  of  letters  and  write  his 
name  on  some  small  stone  of  that  great  temple  in  which 
he  had  worshipped  since  his  childhood,  when  his  mother 
had  read  him  the  story  of  Marathon  and  his  father  had 
recited  Chapman's  Homer  to  him  up  the  white  winding 
path  which  led  to  the  hill-top. 

Then  life  had  called  to  him,  suddenly  and  with  an  ap- 
peal which  he  had  to  obey.  He  must  get  into  the  heart  of 
life  before  he  could  become  a  man  of  letters.  He  must 
know  and  see  and  suffer  before  he  could  be  a  truthteller. 

So  after  tilting  at  windmills  as  a  freelance  Frank  came 
to  Fleet  Street.  From  Arcadia  he  had  come  into  Alsatia. 
I  think,  indeed  I  am  sure,  that  after  a  few  weeks  he  knew 
he  had  left  the  hill-tops  for  the  mire.  To  a  man  of  his 


126  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

training  and  temperament  Fleet  Street  was  a  place  of 
torture.  A  man  who  has  read  poetry  and  learnt  it  by 
heart  cannot  be  content  with  writing  paragraphs  about 
cats  at  the  Crystal  Palace  and  murders  in  Whitechapel 
and  fat  boys  at  Peckham.  A  man  who  has  been  be- 
witched by  word-music  does  not  find  it  easy  to  read  an 
article  of  his  own  writing  which  has  been  slashed  up  by 
blue  pencils  and  left  with  jolting  sentences  and  discon- 
nected phrases.  A  man  who  has  seen  bright  visions  in 
enchanted  woods  does  not  go  joyfully  into  mean  streets, 
into  the  squalor  and  filth  of  human  by-ways.  Other  men 
of  education  and  ideals  would  not  have  suffered  so 
acutely.  With  stronger  fibre  they  would  have  resisted 
the  influence  of  such  a  life  more  manfully,  but  Frank 
was  so  sensitive  that  every  nerve  in  him  quivered  at  the 
least  touch.  Every  rebuff  in  a  profession,  where  rebuffs 
are  constant,  hurt  him  frightfully.  Every  insult,  in  a 
life  of  ceaseless  insults,  left  him  with  an  open  wound. 
To  be  born  a  gentleman,  with  instincts  of  pride  and  dig- 
nity and  delicacy,  is  the  greatest  misfortune  to  those  who 
write  history  day  by  day. 

Frank  was  unfortunate  in  being  a  gentleman  and  some- 
thing of  a  scholar.  It  was  not  easy  for  him  to  suffer  the 
crack  of  the  whip  in  the  hands  of  his  chief  Vicary,  who, 
in  spite  of  being  a  genial  and  good-hearted  man,  was,  on 
account  of  the  system,  a  relentless  slave-driver.  But  that 
was  endurable  in  comparison  to  the  daily  torture  of  work 
which  compelled  him  to  cringe  to  flunkeys,  to  be  polite 
to  low  scoundrels,  to  smile  in  the  face  of  liars,  to  listen 
patiently  to  the  egotism  of  fools,  to  gloss  over  the  horrors 
and  villainies  with  which  he  came  in  daily  contact. 

Physically  Frank  was  at  a  pitiful  disadvantage.  He 
was  not  a  weakling.  When  I  had  seen  him  at  King's 
Marshwood  I  had  admired  his  straight  back,  his  lithe 
figure,  the  beautiful  bronze  of  his  face  and  hands.  But 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  127 

he  was  like  a  fine  Toledo  blade  which  was  not  made  for 
chopping  wood.  His  spirit  was  so  delicate,  so  highly- 
strung,  that  his  body  suffered.  The  life  of  a  descriptive 
writer  on  a  newspaper  is  the  severest  test  of  strength. 
The  irregularity  of  hours,  which  often  kept  him  out  till 
the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  and  sometimes  made  him 
drag  a  tired  body  out  of  a  bed  hardly  warm,  told  upon 
him.  The  irregularity  of  his  meals  was  even  more  dan- 
gerous to  a  finely-tempered  constitution,  and  often  he 
would  go  without  food  so  long  that  he  lost  his  appetite 
and  satisfied  it  with  a  cigarette. 

He  became  worn,  restless,  rather  fretful.  But  the 
poison  worked  in  him.  He  laughed  bitterly  as  he  de- 
scribed to  me  the  daily  disappointment  and  the  insuffer- 
able conditions  of  his  new  life,  yet  when  I  suggested  that 
he  should  break  with  it  and  get  back  to  peace  and  a  coun- 
try school  he  confessed  that  Fleet  Street  had  "got  hold 
of  him."  Although  he  was  angry  when  after  a  dciy's 
exciting  work  Vicary  sent  him  off  on  an  evening  engage- 
ment, he  was  much  more  distressed  if,  as  often  happens 
in  Fleet  Street,  he  was  compelled  to  spend  a  day  or  two 
in  utter  idleness.  Other  men,  like  Brandon  and  Codring- 
ton,  enjoyed  the  spell  of  inactivity,  smoking  innumerable 
pipes  or  cigarettes,  playing  innumerable  games  of  chess, 
reading  novels  or  papers,  and  discussing  with  interminable 
arguments  the  influence  of  Meredith,  the  art  of  Oscar 
Wilde,  the  characteristics  of  Marie  Corelli,  the  latest 
murder  trial,  or  a  new  detective  story.  Frank  being  new 
to  the  system  was  worried  by  a  day  of  do-nothing.  He 
could  not  understand  it.  He  became  uneasy  and  ill-at- 
ease,  and  doubted  whether  he  was  earning  his  salary. 
He  brought  down  books  to  the  office,  but  found  that  he 
lost  his  taste  for  reading.  He  thought  of  writing  some- 
thing in  his  leisure  hours,  a  novel,  or  some  more  essays 
for  the  Spectator.  But  he  was  unused  to  working  in  a 


128  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

room  where  men  were  fighting  duels  with  indiarubber 
bands  on  rulers,  or  practising  the  strangle-grip,  or  ju- 
jitsu,  or  watching  a  chess-combat  with  a  running  fire  of 
comment,  sarcasm  and  impertinent  advice.  Sometimes 
when  he  had  an  evening  alone  in  his  rooms  at  Staple  Inn 
he  sat  down  before  blank  sheets  of  paper  with  the  idea 
of  writing  something  that  would  satisfy  his  desire  of  ar- 
tistic expression,  but  the  thought  of  the  day's  adventures 
prevented  all  concentration  of  mind,  and  he  would  find 
himself  going  back  again  and  again  to  some  new  phase 
of  life  which  had  been  revealed  to  him,  to  an  interview 
with  some  public  man  or  woman,  or  to  office  scenes  in 
which  he  had  played  the  part  of  onlooker. 

That  also  worried  him.  Frank  knew  that  his  col- 
leagues held  aloof  from  him.  They  were  polite,  they 
were  quite  pleasant,  but  they  made  him  feel  that  he  was 
not  one  of  them.  He  wondered  why.  He  was  almost 
weak  in  his  desire  to  get  their  friendship  and  goodfellow- 
ship.  He  had  a  yearning  to  be  on  equal  terms  with  them, 
and  to  be  one  of  "the  boys,"  as  they  called  each  other. 
But  he  was  conscious  that  when  he  came  into  the  room 
conversation  which  had  been  hilarious  toned  down  a  lit- 
tle, that  a  man  telling  a  funny  story  with  dramatic  ges- 
tures concluded  it  in  half  tones.  If  he  ventured  some 
remark,  in  a  hesitating  way,  there  was  a  momentary  pause 
before  they  answered  it.  Frank  could  not  help  seeing 
that  these  men,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  looked  upon 
him  as  a  prig,  as  a  fellow  who  gave  himself  superior 
airs.  Yet  in  reality  he  had  no  feeling  of  superiority  to 
these  men.  He  was  filled  with  a  deep  admiration  for 
them,  for  the  pluck,  and  high  spirits  and  knowledge  of 
the  world,  and  splendid  camaraderie  among  themselves. 

The  truth  is  that  in  spite  of  his  humility  and  quiet  good- 
humour  the  staff  of  the  Rag  knew  that  Frank  Luttrell  was 
different  from  them.  Intuitively  they  knew  him  to  be  a 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  129 

man  who  had  ideals  which  they  had  long  cast  off  but  did 
not  despise.  They  saw  that  he  had  a  delicacy  and  re- 
finement of  spirit  which  unfitted  him  for  the  coarse  tex- 
ture of  a  life  in  Fleet  Street.  His  handsome,  sensitive 
face,  the  Oxford  manner  which  he  had  not  yet  got  rid  of, 
his  politeness  and  seriousness,  made  them  feel  slightly  un- 
comfortable. They  had  been  coarsened,  and  they  were 
never  polite.  They  insulted  each  other  deliberately  and 
brutally,  knowing  that  their  words  would  have  no  effect 
on  a  tough  skin  and  would  be  accepted  as  a  sign  of  good 
spirits.  Cynicism  had  become  a  habit  with  them,  and 
they  felt  uneasy  in  the  presence  of  a  colleague  who  winced 
when  they  discussed  sacred  subjects  with  light-hearted 
irreverence  and  flushed  like  a  girl  when  they  indulged  in 
Rabelaisian  humour.  Yet  they  did  not  dislike  Frank 
Luttrell.  On  the  contrary  they  pitied  him  secretly,  and 
were  sorry  when  they  saw  how  quickly  he  was  being 
worn  and  torn  by  the  condition  of  a  career  which  to 
most  of  them  had  become  a  second  nature.  They  had  no 
illusions  left.  They,  who  had  started  with  literary  ambi- 
tions, had  long  ago  abandoned  them.  They  regarded  ev- 
erything as  "part  of  the  day's  work,"  put  up  with  its 
hardships,  swore  terrible  oaths  when  the  screw  was  too 
severe,  but  found  a  grim  amusement  even  in  their  own 
most  miserable  experiences,  and  prided  themselves  on 
"playing  the  game."  On  the  whole  they  found  life  amus- 
ing enough  and  took  it  laughing.  Among  themselves 
they  discussed  Frank  Luttrell  with  curiosity,  and  found 
his  psychology  interesting. 

"He  is  one  of  those  fellows  who  will  probably  break 
his  heart  with  disappointed  ambition,  fall  in  love  with 
the  wrong  woman,  lose  his  job  at  the  end  of  a  few  years, 
and  end  his  days  in  a  lunatic  asylum.  They're  no  use 
to  us  in  Fleet  Street." 

That  was  the  cruel  summing  up  of  one  of  the  reporters, 


130  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

a  middle-aged  man  named  Braithwaite,  who  had  once 
been  the  news-editor  of  a  Conservative  paper  on  £15  a 
week,  and  was  now  doing  the  law-courts  for  the  Liberal 
organ  on  a  third  of  that  salary. 

Brandon,  the  crime  expert,  had  a  different  theory. 

"Luttrell  will  probably  kick  the  dust  of  Fleet  Street 
off  his  shoes,  go  down  to  a  cottage  in  Cornwall,  and  write 
a  novel  of  a  morbid  character  which  will  give  delicious 
thrills  to  maiden  ladies.  ...  I  like  the  boy.  He  is  a 
sentimentalist  and  something  of  a  mystic.  He  has  almost 
a  feminine  gift  of  sympathy.  We  haven't  enough  of  'em 
now-a-days,  and  none  at  all  down  this  alley,  barring  him- 
self." 

"I  agree  with  Braithwaite  regarding  the  love-story/' 
said  Codrington.  "He  is  predestined  to  a  hopeless  pas- 
sion. Melancholy  grey-blue  eyes  like  his  are  very  appeal- 
ing to  women.  Women  always  have  soul-adventures 
with  eyes  like  that,  but  in  the  end  they  generally  marry  a 
brute  with  optics  like  motor-goggles.  That  is  why  I  am 
still  a  bachelor.  Luttrell  and  I  are  in  the  same  boat." 

"Well,  as  long'as  you  are  not  both  after  the  same  girl," 
said  Braithwaite,  with  a  rough  guffaw. 

Codrington  flushed  uneasily. 

"You  have  no  manners,  Braithwaite." 

Brandon  and  Codrington  were  the  only  men  in  the  of- 
fice with  whom  Luttrell  became  in  any  way  intimate. 
They  took  him  out  with  them  occasionally  to  a  Bohemian 
restaurant  in  Soho  which  seemed  to  be  a  rendezvous  for 
pressmen.  Luttrell  found  the  conversation  of  these  men 
over  the  table  of  an  almost  haunting  interest  to  him. 
Both  of  them  had  had  the  strangest  adventures.  Both 
of  them  seemed  to  know  life  in  the  lowest  haunts.  Both 
of  them  seemed  to  be  strangely  familiar  with  thieves  and 
detectives,  and  pugilists,  and  queer  characters  of  the 
sporting  world.  In  a  language  which  was  almost  unintel- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  131 

ligible  to  Luttrell  they  described  famous  prize-fights  and 
races  where  horses  had  been  "pulled."  They  knew  the 
history  of  crimes  of  which  he  had  never  heard,  and  told 
life-stories  of  law-breakers  who  for  certain  reasons  had 
never  been  "lagged"  by  the  police,  though  the  evidence 
was  clear  against  them.  They  seemed  to  have  a  familiar 
acquaintance  with  all  the  scandals  of  society,  and  entered 
into  arguments  about  causes  celebres  in  which  they  knew 
the  parties  on  either  side.  But  often  the  xonversation 
turned  upon  literature  and  drama,  and  to  LuttrelPs  sur- 
prise he  found  that  Brandon,  who  professionally  seemed 
exclusively  interested  in  crime,  was  a  devoted  admirer  of 
Meredith,  whose  works  he  seemed  to  know  by  heart.  He 
had  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  mid- Victorian  novelists 
and  an  almost  religious  reverence  for  Jane  Austen,  who 
he  maintained  was  the  greatest  artist  that  had  ever  lived. 
Codrington  was  curiously  inconsistent  in  his  literary  idol- 
atry. He  held  up  Sterne,  Fielding,  and  Smollett  as  the 
models  for  all  time  and  all  ages,  but  in  violent  contrast 
idolised  certain  modern  writers  whom  Brandon  declared 
to  be  "decadent,"  and  of  whom  Luttrell  had  to  confess 
complete  ignorance.  Codrington  had  strange  theories 
about  literary  art  and  life.  He  declared  that  life  itself 
should  be  shaped  according  to  literary  ideals,  and  that 
every  man  should  mould  himself  upon  some  type  found 
in  one  of  the  great  masterpieces.  "The  art  of  life,"  said 
Codrington,  "is  to  adopt  a  pose,  or,  if  you  like  to  call  it 
so,  an  ideal,  and  to  be  consistent  in  one's  endeavor  to 
make  that  pose  so  perfect  that  it  becomes  natural.  For 
instance,  Luttrell  there  should  adopt  the  David  Copper- 
field  type,  which  of  course  is  really  Charles  Dickens  as  a 
young  man.  He  should  wear  his  hair  longer,  and  collars 
open  at  the  throat,  with  a  black  stock  round  his  neck.  He 
should  certainly  wear"  straps  to  his  trousers,  and  a  tall  hat 
with  a  rather  curly  brim.  He  has  got  all  the  rest  inside 


132  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

him :  the  sentiment,  the  serious  ideals,  the  sensitiveness  to 
environment,  the  facility  for  falling  in  love  with  the  Dora 
type  of  woman,  and  the  temperament  which  would  make 
such  a  woman  a  torture  to  him  if  he  ever  marries." 

"Thanks !"  said  Luttrell,  rather  taken  aback  by  this 
fanciful  analysis  of  his  character.  "If  what  you  say  is 
true,  I  will  avoid  that  particular  pose  strenuously." 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  Codrington,  "you  don't  under- 
stand. You  must  be  true  to  type.  You  must  be  artistic 
in  the  treatment  of  your  own  personality.  If  you  avoid 
the  right  pose,  you  become  a  nonenity,  or  a  bungled  thing. 
Look  at  Martin  Harvey;  he  would  be  nothing  at  all  if 
some  one  had  not  told  him  that  he  was  the  living  image 
of  Sydney  Carton  in  the  Tale  of  Two  Cities  as  drawn  by 
Frank  Barnard.  He  owes  his  whole  success  to  the  care- 
ful adaptation  of  his  personality  to  that  type." 

"What  is  your  type?"  asked  Luttrell. 

"Ah !"  said  Codrington.  He  played  with  his  seals  for 
a  moment,  and  then  took  a  pinch  of  snuff  out  of  a  small 
enamelled  box.  "Study  the  eighteenth-century  novelists ; 
you  will  find  me  there." 

Luttrell  wanted  to  find  the  twentieth-century  man  be- 
hind his  eighteenth-century  mask.  He  wanted  to  know, 
with  anxious  curiosity,  what  was  in  the  heart  and  brain  of 
this  tall,  handsome  fellow  who  behaved  with  such  care- 
fully-studied languor  and  elegance,  who  contrived  to  get 
even  into  his  hastily-written  "copy"  a  curious  touch  of 
old-fashioned  pedantry,  and  quaint  conceited  little  phrases 
which  suggested  an  eighteenth-century  essay  in  The  Gen- 
tleman's Magazine. . .  He  wanted  to  know,  above  all  things, 
what  were  his  exact  relations  with  Katherine  Halstead, 
with  whom  he  seemed  always  to  be  quarrelling  in  a  mock- 
ing spirit,  and  yet  to  whom  he  behaved  also  with  an  un- 
derlying tenderness  and  gallantry.  There  was  some  secret 
understanding  between  them.  They  were  often  together. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  133 

He  had  met  them  walking  slowly  one  night  under  the 
trees  on  the  Embankment.  Neither  of  them  had  seen 
the  passer-by.  But  the  passer-by,  who  was  Frank  Lut- 
trell,  had  seen  that  Christopher  Codrington,  who  had 
taken  his  hat  off  to  let  the  breeze  stir  his  pale  gold  hair, 
was  smiling  as  he  bent  down  to  talk  to  the  girl  at  his  side, 
and  that  Katherine  seemed  to  be  angry  with  him.  He 
heard  only  a  few  words  as  he  passed  and  it  was  Kath- 
erine who  spoke. 

"You  do  not  play  the  game,  Chris,"  she  said.  "How 
can  you  expect  me  to  be  patient  with  you  ?" 

Obviously  there  was  some  understanding  or  misunder- 
standing between  them.  As  they  had  come  into  the 
room  together  one  day  at  the  office,  Luttrell  had  seen 
Braithwaite  wink  at  Brandon.  Whenever  anybody 
wanted  to  know  where  Codrington  was  they  asked  Kath- 
erine Halstead,  and  so  they  asked  Codrington  when  they 
wanted  Katherine.  Luttrell  was  tempted  to  ask  one  of 
the  men  whether  these  two  were  engaged,  but  he  could  not 
summon  up  the  courage  to  do  so.  For  some  reason  he 
was  afraid  of  what  the  answer  might  be.  But  he  asked, 
one  day,  of  Brandon,  what  Codrington  was  and  had  been. 
Brandon  laughed.  He  had  a  habit  of  giving  a  curious 
low  laugh  when  he  wished  to  avoid  a  direct  answer. 

"Codrington's  present  began  two  years  ago  when  he 
joined  the  Rag,"  he  said.  "Codrington's  past  is  his  own 
business,  but  has  been  the  subject  of  rumour.  Braith- 
waite  says  he  was  a  music-hall  singer  in  the  Provinces. 
Birkenshaw  says  he  is  the  son  of  a  duke  and  has  quar- 
relled with  his  father.  You  may  take  your  choice." 

Brandon  himself  was  revealed  to  Frank  in  an  unex- 
pected way.  He  was  always  rather  cold,  always  reserved 
regarding  any  fact  about  his  private  life,  and  Frank  had 
been  hurt  more  than  once  by  the  man's  abruptness  with 
him.  He  was  astonished,  therefore,  one  day  when  Bran- 


134  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

don  invited  him  to  supper  at  his  flat  near  Battersea  Park. 
"We  can  talk  Meredith  and  Maeterlinck  till  we  are  tired," 
he  said.  And  then  he  added  in  his  abrupt  way:  "Don't 
come  if  you  don't  want  to.  For  God's  sake,  don't  be 
polite — that  is  what  I  hate." 

"I  shall  be  devilish  glad  to  come,"  said  Frank.  "Bar- 
ring Mother  Hubbard's  rooms,  I  have  nowhere  to  go  ex- 
cept to  my  own  solitude  in  Staple  Inn.  Is  it  dress?" 

"Dress!"  said  Brandon,  snorting.  "Oh,  if  you're  one 
of  that  sort,  you  had  better  stay  away.  I  only  wear  liv- 
ery when  I  am  on  duty." 

"I  am  not  one  of  that  sort,"  said  Frank.  "I  am  never 
happy  out  of  a  Norfolk  jacket  or  my  old  college  blazer." 

"There  are  a  lot  of  fools  down  my  road,"  said  Bran- 
don, "who  are  so  proud  of  wearing  clean  linen  that  they 
pull  up  the  blinds,  turn  on  the  electric  light,  and  show 
their  shirt-fronts  to  the  passers-by." 

Frank  spent  a  remarkable  evening  with  Brandon.  He 
lived  on  the  fourth  floor  of  a  block  of  mansions  facing 
Battersea  Park.  It  was  a  good-sized  flat,  furnished  in  the 
barest  style,  but  in  good  taste.  On  the  wall  of  the  room 
into  which  Brandon  first  led  him  were  some  etchings  by 
Whistler  and  others,  original  character  studies  by  Phil 
May,  and  a  whole  series  of  drawings  by  Aubrey  Beards- 
ley,  all  neatly  framed  in  black.  In  the  bookcases,  to 
which  Frank's  eyes  travelled  at  once,  were  some  good 
editions  of  the  English  classics,  including  a  fair  selection 
of  the  poets,  and  numbers  of  French  books  on  crim- 
inology, and  a  long  row  of  detective  stories  in  paper 
covers.  This  juxtaposition  of  poetry  and  the  history  of 
crime  seemed  to  Frank  startling  in  its  incongruity. 

Brandon  was  in  an  old  brown  suit,  and  had  a  pipe  in 
his  mouth.  His  rather  massive,  clean-shaven  face  seemed 
more  than  ever  to  be  stamped  by  the  impress  of  some 
tragic  memory,  and  his  habit  of  abruptness  was  exagger- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  135 

ated  into  something  like  actual  rudeness.  Frank  felt  hor- 
ribly nervous,  and  wondered  if  he  had  been  invited  to  be 
insulted.  Then  the  door  opened,  and  a  woman  came  in, 
and  Brandon  said,  "My  wife." 

The  woman — she  was  almost  a  girl — was  of  remark- 
able beauty.  She  had  mouse-coloured  hair,  an  oval  face 
with  high  cheek-bones  and  a  long,  bow-like  mouth,  the 
cheeks  and  the  lips  touched  with  carmine — by  nature  and 
not  by  the  paint-brush — and  a  long  white  neck.  But  her 
eyes  were  most  astonishing.  They  were  large,  and  of  the 
purest  china-blue.  She  wore  a  green  dress  cut  low  at  the 
throat,  and  without  a  waist,  and  as  she  came  towards 
him,  without  the  usual  simpering  welcome  of  the  middle- 
class  hostess,  but  gravely  and  rather  timidly,  Frank 
thought  that  one  of  Burne- Jones's  dream- women  must 
have  come  into  the  living  flesh.  And  then  she  spoke,  and 
if  Frank  had  not  been  a  gentleman  by  instinct  as  well  as 
by  breeding,  he  would  have  opened  his  eyes  wider  with 
amazement. 

She  spoke  in  the  strongest  Cockney  dialect — not  with 
the  thin  nasal  twang  of  the  half -cockney,  but  with  the 
hoarse  voice,  the  complete  vowel-changes,  of  the  East  End 
coster-girl. 

"It's  dahnraht  good  of  yer  to  come,  Mr.  Luttrell,"  she 
said  earnestly,  taking  his  hand,  and  holding  it  for  a 
moment.  "Bill  'ave  horfen  spoke  abaht  yer/' 

Frank  bent  over  her  hand  with  the  reverence  he  always 
paid  to  women.  He  did  not  see  that  Brandon  was  watch- 
ing him  curiously,  and  that  for  a  moment  an  expression 
of  admiration,  almost  of  tenderness,  passed  over  his  face. 

"It  is  jolly  good  of  you  to  have  me,  Mrs.  Brandon," 
said  Frank. 

"Oh,"  said  the  beautiful  woman  in  her  hoarse  voice, 
"yer  didn't  ought  ter  call  me  that !  Mah  nime  is  jest  Peg 
to  Bill's  pals.  Ain't  he  told  yer  abaht  it?" 


136          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

She  looked  swiftly  over  to  the  man  who  had  called  her 
his  wife  with  an  expression  of  appeal  and  surprise. 

"No,  Peg,"  said  Brandon.  "I  haven't  told  him.  ...  Is 
supper  ready?  We  are  both  hungry." 

"Yus,"  said  the  woman.  "We've  kep'  it  witing  fur  yer. 
I  'ope  it  won't  'ave  spylt  by  nah." 

"I  am  afraid  I  am  rather  late,"  said  Frank.  "I  ought 
to  have  made  my  excuses  before." 

He  spoke  without  a  tremor  in  his  voice  and  without  a 
glance  to  show  that  he  was  excited  by  a  great  surprise, 
a  surprise  indeed  amounting  to  an  uncanny  feeling  that 
he  was  not  in  his  right  senses.  Brandon  had  called  her 
his  wife,  but  she  had  said  that  her  name  was  not  Mrs. 
Brandon.  She  was  surprised  that  he  had  not  been  told. 
Told  what  ?  What  was  this  extraordinary  mystery  which 
associated  Brandon  with  a  woman  who  looked  like  one 
of  Burne-Jones's  dream-pictures,  and  who  spoke  like  a 
Whitechapel  flower-girl  ? 

The  dinner,  or  supper,  as  Brandon  called  it,  was  a 
curious  episode.  The  mysterious  "Peg"  took  the  head  of 
the  table  and  served  the  meal.  Once  she  passed  a  piece 
of  bread  to  Brandon  on  the  point  of  her  knife,  and  once 
she  used  her  knife  to  put  some  gravy  into  her  mouth, 
but  then,  remembering  some  lesson,  it  seemed,  laid  it 
down  quickly;  looking  across  to  Brandon  with  a  mute 
appeal  for  forgiveness.  Her  eyes  were  always  upon 
Brandon,  watching  him  eat,  quick  to  notice  whether  he 
had  all  he  wanted,  and  waiting  for  a  sign  from  him  when 
she  had  to  pass  something  to  Frank  or  put  the  first  plates 
on  the  sideboard.  Whenever  Frank  spoke  to  her  she 
had  a  timid,  scared  expression,  and  hesitated  before  she 
answered  in  her  Cockney  dialect.  A  change  had  come 
over  Brandon.  The  abrupt  manner  in  which  he  had  wel- 
comed his  guest  was  now  replaced  by  a  geniality  and 
friendliness.  He  seemed  in  better  spirits  than  Frank 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  137 

had  ever  seen  him  before,  and  the  gloom  on  his  face 
lifted.  He  told  some  of  his  latest  adventures — queer  and 
ghoulish  stories  of  Irish  "wakes"  in  the  East  End,  of 
"freak"  suicides,  and  of  thieves'  kitchens,  all  of  them 
touched  by  a  grim  humour  which  redeemed  their 
tragedy  and  squalor.  Once  or  twice  he  appealed  to  "Peg" 
upon  some  detail  of  custom  or  turn  of  a  phrase  in  the 
low  haunts  of  "down  East,"  and  she  answered  with  that 
seriousness  which  made  her  face  so  interesting  in  repose. 
But  once  when  Brandon  spoke  of  being  away  for  three 
days  in  the  following  week,  she  gave  a  little  cry  of  dis- 
may, as  though  the  thought  of  his  absence  was  unen- 
durable. 

Brandon  put  his  hand  on  hers  above  the  table-cloth  and 
said,  "Why,  Peg,  three  days  will  pass  soon  enough." 

The  girl  turned  to  Frank,  and  in  the  husky  voice  and 
accent  which  it  is  impossible  to  reproduce  said  that  she 
dreaded  Brandon,  or  "Bill,"  as  she  called  him,  being 
away  from  her.  She  could  do  nothing  but  wander  about 
the  rooms.  She  could  almost  go  mad  sometimes,  she 
said,  when  the  night  came  and  she  found  herself  still 
lonely.  It  gave  her  the  horrors.  She  thought  the  life 
of  pressmen  was  very  rough  on  their  women. 

"For  men  must  work  and  women  must  weep,"  said 
Brandon. 

"Ah,"  said  the  girl,  "that's  po'try,  ain't  it?  It's  Cord's 
truth,  I  don't  fink!" 

"You  shouldn't  say  you  don't  think,  when  you  mean 
you  do  think,  Peg,"  said  Brandon.  He  turned  to  Frank 
and  said,  quite  simply,  "It's  strange  how  Cockneys  al- 
ways say  precisely  the  opposite  to  what  they  mean  when 
they  want  to  emphasise  a  statement.  For  instance  'not 
arf  means  very  much  more  than  half — completely  and 
utterly — and  that  is  the  key  to  the  whole  code  of  ex- 
pression." 


138  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

This  direct  reference  to  the  woman's  uneducated 
speech  was  disconcerting  to  Luttrell,  who  said  rather 
feebly  that  he  "supposed  so." 

After  the  meal,  the  girl  rose  at  a  sign  from  Brandon, 
and  disappeared  from  the  room. 

"We'll  have  a  smoke  and  talk,"  said  Brandon. 

He  threw  over  some  cigarettes,  but  lit  up  a  pipe  him- 
self, and  puffed  silently  for  a  few  moments.  But  the 
strange  girl  came  back  with  coffee.  Frank  took  a  cup, 
and  she  crossed  over  to  Brandon,  and  slipped  down  on 
her  knees  before  him,  as  he  took  sugar  and  milk.  A 
lady  might  have  done  the  same  thing  to  her  husband 
without  exciting  remark.  It  was  pretty  and  simple. 
But  when  it  was  done  by  this  extraordinary  coster-girl, 
it  made  Frank  think  of  an  oriental  slave-girl  with  her 
lord  and  master. 

When  she  had  gone  again  Brandon  opened  the  conver- 
sation by  asking  him  how  he  liked  Fleet  Street  life,  and 
when  Frank  hesitated  in  reply,  he  said,  "I  know.  You 
are  having  the  devil  of  a  time,  of  course.  You  are  not 
cut  out  for  such  work." 

"Oh,  I  like  it,"  said  Frank,  quickly.  "I  find  it  extraor- 
dinarily fascinating." 

"That's  where  the  danger  comes  in,"  said  Brandon. 
"Fellows  like  you — once  upon  a  time  I  should  have  said 
fellows  like  me — get  led  onwards  by  the  variety  of  the 
work,  by  its  continual  excitement,  and  because  it  brings 
one  into  touch  all  the  time  with  new  things.  Then  at 
forty  years  of  age — I  am  thirty-nine,  so  I  have  another 
year ! — one  wakes  up  to  find  oneself  staled.  A  touch  of 
influenza,  after  a  ride  on  an  omnibus,  late  at  night,  puts 
one  to  bed  for  a  week.  And  then  one  comes  back  to 
work,  feeling  less  inclined  to  rush  about,  finding  it  more 
difficult  to  write  quickly,  more  of  an  effort  to  get  the  right 
phrases,  and  the  touches  of  spirit  and  style  that  make 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  139 

the  difference  between  a  bright  article  and  a  dull  one, 
and  what  happens  next?  .  .  .  'Oh,  poor  old  Brandon/ 
says  some  one,  'is  getting  deuced  dull.'  'It  is  time  poor 
old  Brandon  got  another  job,'  says  some  one  else.  And 
poor  old  Brandon  gets  a  kind  letter  and  three  months' 
salary,  and  a  dinner  from  the  staff,  and  he  goes  into 
cheaper  lodgings,  and  avoids  his  old  pals  or  sponges 
on  them,  and  picks  up  a  few  jobs  here  and  there,  and 
wonders  how  long  it  will  be  before  the  end  comes." 

"You  all  talk  like  that,"  said  Luttrell— "every  one  of 
you  till  I  get  the  creeps.  And  yet  you  all  stay  in  the 
street.  Not  one  of  you  will  leave  it  when  you  have  the 
chance." 

"Quite  true,"  said  Brandon.  "D'ye  know  Kipling's 
song?"  He  hummed  it. 

"  'For  to  admire  and  for  to  see, 

For  to  be' old  this  world  so  wide; 
It  never  done  no  good  to  me, 
But  I  can't  drop  it  if  I  tried!' 

That  was  written  by  a  journalist ;  that's  the  song  of  the 
wandering  men  with  the  wandering  eyes." 

So  the  conversation  went  on;  Brandon  giving  his  ex- 
periences of  many  papers  and  many  editors.  About 
editors  he  said  that  the  course  of  modern  journalism  was 
the  disappearance  of  the  old-fashioned  editor  who  was  a 
politician  and  a  man  of  literary  taste,  and  the  advent  of 
the  business  man  who  had  one  eye  on  the  circulation  and 
the  other  on  the  advertisements.  "Most  of  'em  are  small 
men,"  he  said,  "who  have  worked  their  way  into  the  edi- 
torial chair  by  intrigue  and  diplomacy  and  business  ability 
of  the  ruthless  cutting-down,  cheese-paring,  inhuman 
kind.  They  have  a  lot  of  small  ideas  and  no  big  ones. 
They  funk  anything  which  goes  against  public  opinion 
because  they  are  afraid  of  reducing  circulation,  and  the 


140  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

leading  article  is  controlled  by  the  advertising  depart- 
ment." 

"Is  it  quite  as  bad  as  that  all  round?"  said  Luttrell. 

"No.    There  are  still  a  few  exceptions.    Precious  few." 

"How  about  Bellamy?"  asked  Luttrell. 

Brandon  smiled. 

"Oh,  Bellamy!  .  .  .  He'd  be  the  first  to  admit  he's 
not  the  Heaven-born  editor.  But  he's  a  gallant  little 
man  and  a  good  pal  in  private  life.  He  has  still  kept 
some  humanity  about  him,  and  he  has  got  a  strong  call  on 
the  loyalty  of  the  staff.  .  .  .  He's  facing  a  tough  job, 
too.  What  with  the  proprietor — a  weak,  well-meaning 
man  who  is  losing  more  money  than  he  likes — on  the  one 
side,  and  a  little  gang  of  incompetent  blighters  not  a 
thousand  miles  away,  he  has  to  move  warily.  God  knows 
what  will  be  the  end  of  it." 

Luttrell  was  interested,  but  all  the  time  his  thoughts 
kept  going  back  to  the  girl  with  the  Burne-Jones  face. 
Perhaps  Brandon  knew  what  was  in  his  mind,  for  pres- 
ently, as  though  in  answer  to  Luttrell's  thoughts,  he  said 
abruptly — 

"I  suppose  you  are  wondering  about  Peg?" 

"I  have  no  right  to  wonder,"  said  Frank,  colouring  up 
in  spite  of  his  effort  to  appear  unembarrassed. 

Brandon  drew  his  chair  close  to  the  fire,  and  picked  up 
a  poker.  For  a  few  moments  he  stared  into  the  flames, 
and  the  old  look  of  tragic  reminiscence  crept  into  his 
face  again. 

"You  have  a  right  to  know.  I  asked  you  here  ...  I 
should  be  glad  if  you  would  look  after  Peg  sometimes 
when  I  go  away." 

He  laughed  in  a  low  voice. 

"I  dare  say  you  think  you  have  got  into  a  mad-house, 
or  something.  Peg  is  startling,  I  know.  .  .  .  But  any- 
how  "  He  spoke  with  a  sudden  enthusiasm — "You 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  141 

are  a  brick,  Luttrell.  You  are  a  gentleman  to  the  bone, 
old  man.  .  .  .  You  didn't  let  Peg  see  by  the  flicker  of 
an  eyelid  that  you  were  amazed  by  her  way  of  speech. 
You  behaved  as  though  she  were  a  duchess  all  the  time. 
I  admired  you  for  that." 

In  a  simple,  straightforward  way  he  told  Frank  an 
extraordinary  story,  that  was  partly  a  confession,  partly 
a  defence.  While  it  was  being  told,  Frank  lent  forward, 
staring  into  the  fire,  as  Brandon  stared  into  it ;  and  beads 
of  sweat  broke  out  upon  his  forehead,  and  once  he  drew 
a  long  quivering  breath.  All  of  that  story  need  not  be 
told  here — the  story  of  a  young  man  who,  with  a  restless 
spirit,  and  an  insatiable  curiosity  for  life,  finds  himself 
an  adventurer  in  London,  lonely  and  needing  intimate 
companionship.  He  found  that  companionship  in  Queer 
Street,  amongst  men  and  women  who  had  no  law  of  life 
but  that  which  bade  them  seize  on  any  fleeting  pleasure, 
and  satisfy  any  passing  passion,  regardless  of  the  price. 
Brandon  had  plunged  into  this  life  recklessly,  and  had 
lived  a  few  wild  years,  without  a  thought  that  one  day 
he,  too,  would  have  to  pay  the  price ;  the  price  of  his  own 
wild  oats — the  most  expensive  grain  in  life's  harvest — 
and  the  price  of  one  woman's  ruined  soul.  The  woman 
had  died  as  most  of  her  class  die,  and  Brandon  found 
upon  his  doormat  a  letter  written  by  the  hand  which  was 
stiff  and  cold.  The  words  in  it  burnt  into  his  brain  like 
red-hot  irons,  and  seared  him  with  the  brand  of  shame. 
For  months  those  words  rang  into  his  ears  wildly,  ac- 
cusingly, until  he  was  nearly  tortured  into  madness.  All 
the  time  he  was  doing  his  daily  work,  reporting  murder- 
trials,  describing  charity  bazaars  when  there  were  no 
murders,  and  summarising  Blue  Books.  By  sheer  will- 
power he  kept  sane,  and  no  one  knew  that  he  had  been 
in  Hell. 

Then,  one  day  he  met  Peg.     He  met  her  in  a  police- 


142  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

court  where  she  was  giving  evidence  against  a  man  who 
had  tried  to  murder  her,  and  who  had  succeeded  within 
an  eighth  of  an  inch.  His  knife  had  glanced  upon  her 
corset,  and  missed  her  heart.  The  evidence  was  dragged 
out  of  the  girl,  and,  after  weeping  bitterly  in  the  dock, 
she  swooned  when  she  was  hissed  by  the  low-class  crowd 
in  court  who  hate  a  woman  for  "giving  away"  her  man. 
The  man  was  sentenced  to  twelve  years'  penal  servitude 
for  attempted  murder,  and  he  left  the  dock  cursing  and 
blaspheming.  The  girl  slipped  out  of  the  court  by  a  side 
way;  but  the  crowd  recognised  her  down  a  side  street 
and  would  have  torn  her  to  bits,  if  Brandon  had  not 
been  there.  Putting  his  arm  round  her,  he  had  fought 
his  way  through  the  mob  of  evil  men  and  loose  women, 
and  then,  with  the  assistance  of  the  police  who  now  came 
upon  the  scene,  put  her  half  fainting  into  a  cab.  He 
drove  home  with  her  to  the  flat  in'Battersea  Park;  and 
on  that  journey,  while  with  closed  eyes  she  lay  with  her 
head  upon  his  shoulder,  he  vowed  that  he  would  try  to 
rescue  this  girl  from  her  awful  life,  on  account  of  that 
other  woman  whom  he  had  helped  to  ruin.  Peg  had 
been  very  ill,  and  with  the  aid  of  an  old  charwoman  he 
nursed  her  back  to  health.  She  repaid  him  by  a  slave- 
like  love.  She  would  have  let  him  trample  on  her,  and 
would  have  kissed  his  feet.  She  would  have  let  him 
beat  her,  and  she  would  have  kissed  the  whip.  For  the 
first  time  in  her  life,  she  believed  that  one  man  in  the 
world  was  good  and  kind,  and  the  revelation  was  like  a 
miracle  that  had  lifted  her  up  among  women  and  re- 
stored her  purity  and  grace.  Brandon  wanted  to  marry 
her,  but  she  believed  that  she  had  been  married  one  day 
to  a  man  who  had  left  her  on  the  next.  Then  she  had 
fallen  upon  her  knees  and  had  put  her  arms  round  him, 
and  had  wept  passionately  with  her  head  bowed  down 
almost  to  the  ground  before  him,  beseeching  him  not  to 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  143 

ruin  his  life  by  taking  up  "with  the  likes  of  her,"  and  to 
allow  her  to  go  out  again  into  the  streets.  But  Brandon 
said,  "Stay  with  me,  Peg;"  and  his  will  and  her  love  had 
prevailed  over  her  desire  for  sacrifice.  Wild  bird,  bred 
in  the  lowest  haunts  of  life,  with  horrible  memories  that 
came  to  her  in  the  darkness  and  made  her  shriek,  she  was 
only  happy  when  Brandon  was  with  her.  Without  him, 
as  she  had  to  be  many  times,  she  moped  and  pined  and 
— Brandon  spoke  the  words  in  a  low  voice — sometimes 
he  came  back  to  find  that  she  had  found  temporary  solace 
in  the  worst  of  ways — in  drink. 

"That  is  my  story,  Luttrell,"  said  Brandon. 

Frank  was  silent.  He  was  profoundly  moved  by  this 
narrative  in  which  Brandon  had  deliberately  unlocked 
the  mystery  of  his  life. 

"Wrhy  do  you  tell  me  these  things  ?"  he  said  presently. 

"Perhaps  there  is-  a  moral  in  them,"  said  Brandon, 
"anyhow,  a  warning." 

"How  long  has  the  girl  been  with  you?" 

"Only  two  months."  Brandon  got  up  and  put  his 
hand  affectionately  on  Frank's  shoulder. 

"I  haven't  told  another  living  soul,"  he  said.  "Some- 
how I  wanted  you  to  know.  You  won't  go  talking  about 
it  among  the  other  fellows." 

Later  in  the  evening  the  two  men  went  into  the  next 
room.  Peg  was  there  sitting  on  the  floor  with  a  book 
on  her  lap.  It  was  Hans  Andersen's  Fairy  Tales.  She 
rose  when  they  entered,  and  went  swiftly  over  to  Bran- 
don, putting  her  hand  on  his  arm. 

"I'm  that  glad'  you've  come,"  she  said.  "These  tales 
give  me  the  fair  'ump.  They  make  me  want  ter  cry." 

She  sat  with  her  head  against  Brandon's  knee,  and  he 
told  more  stories  about  the  things  he  had  seen.  Then 
Frank  took  his  leave,  and  on  the  landing  he  promised 
his  friend  that  he  would  call  on  Peg  now  and  again,  if 


144  THE  STREET  'OF  ADVENTURE 

possible,  when  she  was  left  alone  in  the  flat  while  Bran- 
don was  away. 

"I  would  not  ask  any  one  else,"  said  Brandon.  "But 
I  can  trust  you,  and  call  on  your  good  nature.  You 
have  got  the  gift  of  sympathy." 

The  two  men  shook  hands,  with  a  grip  that  meant 
more  than  words ;  and  Luttrell,  on  his  swinging  walk 
from  Battersea  Park  to  Holborn,  lived  again  in  imagina- 
tion through  every  detail  of  this  extraordinary  evening. 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  had  not  conceived  anything 
stranger  in  his  New  Arabian  Nights  than  this  episode 
with  the  coster-girl  and  the  remorseful  journalist.  Like 
Luttrell's  adventure  with  the  countess,  it  all  seemed  to 
be  a  mad  dream.  Brandon  had  said  there  was  a  moral 
in  it.  But  Frank,  trying  to  find  the  logic  of  it,  thought 
the  moral  was  rather  muddled,  as  often  happened  in  life, 
it  seemed. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THERE  was  one  place  in  London  where  Frank  Luttrell 
spent  many  of  his  evenings  when  he  was  not  doing  late 
duty  for  the  Rag.  It  was  the  flat  on  the  third  floor  of  the 
bookseller's  shop  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue  where  the  names 
of  Margaret  Hubbard  and  Katherine  Halstead  were  writ- 
ten on  the  brass  plate.  "Mother  Hubbard"  had  given 
him  a  general  invitation.  "If  ever  you  want  to  toast  your 
toes  before  somebody  else's  fire,"  she  said,  "remember 
that  we  always  burn  the  best  coal."  Frank  found  that 
it  was  absurdly  easy  to  invent  excuses  for  turning  in 
the  direction  of  Shaftesbury  Avenue  any  time  after  seven 
o'clock.  Margaret  Hubbard  one  day  expressed  a  wish 
to  read  Maeterlinck's  Life  of  the  Bee.  Frank  was  under 
the  impression  that  he  had  it  on  his  shelves  in  Staple 
Inn.  He  was  quite  mistaken,  but  he  found  it  in  the  shop 
under  Mother  Hubbard's  own  rooms,  bought  it  for  three- 
and-sixpence,  wrote  his  name  in  it,  and  a  date  that  went 
two  years  back,  opened  it  violently  in  several  places, 
dog-eared  three  of  the  pages,  and  then  went  upstairs 
with  it. 

"It  looks  remarkably  clean,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard, 
eyeing  him  suspiciously. 

"Yes,"  said  Frank,  "I  always  take  care  of  my  books. 
Good  books  ought  to  be  treated  with  respect." 

At  another  time  he  found  that  he  had  a  great  desire 
to  read  one  of  G.  K.  Chesterton's  paradoxical  philoso- 
phies which  he  had  seen  on  Margaret  Hubbard's  work- 
table. 

"Could  you  spare  it  for  a  day  or  two  ?"  he  said,  keeping 

US 


146  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

his  hat  in  his  hand  as  though  he  could  not  stay  more 
than  a  minute. 

"Of  course,"  said  Mother  Hubbard,  "and  I  am  sorry 
you  have  not  yet  found  where  we  keep  the  hat-rack." 

It  was  half-past  seven,  and  he  stayed  till  eleven. 

Having  discovered  that  both  Margaret  and  Katherine 
were  fond  of  flowers,  he  became  wonderfully  benevolent 
towards  a  flower-girl  in  the  Strand  who — so  he  said — 
kept  a  drunken  mother  and  a  consumptive  sister.  More 
than  once  or  twice  he  went  without  tea — his  income  was 
not  adapted  to  philanthropy — in  order  to  buy  market 
bunches  of  chrysanthemums  and  violets. 

"It  would  be  a  charity  if  you  would  give  these  things 
the  hospitality  of  your  rooms  and  a  little  water,"  he  said 
when  he  brought  them  to  the  door  of  the  flat.  'Tolly 
looks  on  me  as  a  regular  customer,  and  I  haven't  the 
heart  to  disappoint  her." 

"Your  heart  is  a  bit  too  big  for  your  body,  young 
man,"  said  Mother  Hubbard  severely.  "What  you  want 
is  a  little  less  heart  and  a  bit  more  head.  You  have  no 
business  to  throw  your  money  away  like  this." 

But  her  severity  was  softened  by  the  sight  of  the 
flowers  which  she  adored,  and  Frank  thought  himself 
well  rewarded  when  Katherine,  who  refused  to  do  any 
dusting,  but  regarded  the  arrangement  of  flowers  as  her 
special  province,  put  them  into  vases,  with  many  ejacula- 
tions of  pride  in  her  own  good  taste.  She  would  stand 
back  from  a  blue-china  pot  into  which  she  had  put  the 
tall  flowers,  and  with  her  head  on  one  side,  say,  "How's 
that  for  a  chaste  effect?"  And  Frank  would  say,  "It 
couldn't  be  more  charming,"  or,  with  a  little  insincere 
criticism,  "Don't  you  think  that  fellow  on  the  offside 
wants  a  shorter  stalk?" 

Then  Frank  found  that  his  education  had  been  fright- 
fully neglected  on  the  subject  of  chess.  At  the  office 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  147 

the  men  fought  pitched  battles  while  waiting  for  assign- 
ments; and  it  seemed  to  him  that,  as  a  journalist,  it 
was  his  bounden  duty  to  learn  the  royal  and  ancient 
game.  Did  Miss  Halstead  thmk  she  could  have  the  pa- 
tience, and  spare  the  time,  to  teach  such  a  duffer  as 
himself?  Miss  Halstead,  with  a  queer  little  laugh,  said 
that  she  would  initiate  him  into  the  mysteries  free  of 
charge.  That  was  always  a  good  reason  for  wending 
his  way  to  Shaftesbury  Avenue  after  a  day's  work.  He 
vowed  both  to  Katherine  and  Margaret  Hubbard  that 
there  never  had  been  and  never  would  be  such  a  glorious 
game.  He  could  not  imagine  how  the  dickens  he  had 
lived  so  long  without  learning  it. 

"Well,  you  don't  seem  very  quick  at  it  even  now,"  said 
Mother  Hubbard,  with  her  usual  candour.  "The  way  in 
which  Katherine  always  beats  you — and  she  is  a  perfect 
muff  at  it — is  simply  scandalous." 

"I  almost  believe  he  lets  me  win  on  purpose,"  said 
Katherine;  and  then,  as  if  the  thought  had  just  struck 
her,  she  flushed  up  to  the  eyes  and  said,  "If  I  really 
thought  that  I  would  not  play  another  game." 

Frank  was  scared,  and  by  a  masterly  series  of  moves 
which  broke  down  her  defence,  beat  her  handsomely  in 
two  minutes. 

Mother  Hubbard  was  watching. 

"My  word!"  she  said.  "This  young  man  is  not  so 
innocent  as  he  makes  out.  I  believe  he  is  an  old  hand 
at  the  game!" 

"Good  lord,"  said  Frank,  with  extreme  uneasiness. 
"What  on  earth  makes  you  think  that?" 

"Look  here,"  said  Katherine,  leaning  over  the  board 
with  her  elbows  on  the  table  and  her  face  in  her  hands, 
staring  at  Frank  with  a  penetrating  gaze,  "have  you  been 
playing  a  game  with  me  all  this  time?" 


148  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Frank  looked  almost  too  innocent.  "Yes,"  he  said. 
"Chess  .  .  .  and  a  jolly  game  it  is,  too." 

He  blundered  atrociously  in  the  next  contest  and  re- 
stored the  balance  of  things,  and  afterwards  by  a  curious 
coincidence  Katherine  and  he  won  almost  alternately. 

He  could  not  afford  to  be  quite  honest.  He  dared 
not  confess  that  he  had  played  chess  with  his  father  since 
he  was  ten  years  old  until  the  Rector  had  said,  "Look 
here,  my  boy,  I  thought  I  could  stand  against  any  chess- 
player in  England,  but  you  are  my  master."  If  he  had 
said  such  a  thing,  he  would  have  been  committing  moral 
and  intellectual  suicide,  for  it  would  have  put  an  end  to 
his  greatest  happiness  in  life.  It  was  a  blessed  thing  to 
sit  in  Mother  Hubbard's  rooms  of  an  evening,  at  a  little 
bamboo  table,  with  the  red  and  white  ivories  under  his 
nose,  and  with  Katherine  on  the  other  side,  not  more 
than  a  foot  away,  with  the  fragrance  of  her  hair  as  an 
incense  to  his  spirit,  with  her  pretty  face  to  look  at  and 
learn  by  heart  while  he  waited  for  her  to  move,  with 
her  eyes  sparkling  at  him  when  she  caught  him  in  a  trap 
which  he  had  carefully  prepared  for  himself.  How 
prettily  and  patiently  she  had  taught  him  the  moves, 
which  he  found  so  difficult  to  learn !  How  ingeniously 
and  cleverly  she  had  demonstrated  the  first  problems  of 
opening  and  attack!  How  excited  she  had  been  when, 
after  a  dozen  lessons,  he  was  at  last  able  to  hold  his 
own  without  calling  for  the  charitable  advice  of  his  op- 
ponent! Such  a  pleasure  was  not  to  be  spoilt  by  con- 
fession or  contrition.  Besides,  she  would  never  forgive 
him,  if  she  once  found  out  his  double-dealing. 

Those  games  of  chess,  and  those  visits  with  flowers 
and  books,  did  not  take  place  every  night,  or  every 
week.  There  were  many  interruptions  between  them,  and 
sometimes  a  fortnight  passed  before  Frank  Luttrell  could 
again  press  the  bell-knob  of  the  flat  over  the  bookseller's 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  149 

shop,  and  see  the  two  names  written  in  letters  of  gold 
on  the  door  and  on  his  heart.  He  had  now  gained  a 
more  secure  foothold  on  the  Rag,  and  was  no  longer  the 
raw  recruit.  Vicary  had  bullied  him  for  his  article  on 
William  Trevelyan  Bendall — "when  you  are  told  to  be 
funny,"  he  said,  "don't  try  and  do  the  tragedy  turn"; 
but  Frank  had  heard  afterwards  through  Brandon  that 
both  Bellamy  and  Vicary  had  been  impressed  by  the  grim 
power  and  satire  of  that  sketch.  So  Vicary  kept  him 
busy  now,  and  he  was  getting  accustomed  to  the  thrill 
of  excitement  of  seeing  his  "copy"  in  type,  and  to  the 
disgust  and  disappointment  of  finding  his  carefully- 
thought-out  phrases  mauled  by  sub-editors,  or  turned 
into  absurdity  by  printers'  errors.  Night  after  night, 
he  was  rushing  about  London  in  cabs  and  omnibuses  and 
underground  tubes,  trying  to  track  down  some  elusive 
notoriety,  or  travelling  to  some  provincial  town  to  de- 
scribe a  curious  scene  or  to  interview  an  eccentric  person. 
Bellamy  "the  great  Chief,"  as  he  was  called,  had  put  in 
a  word  for  him  with  Vicary.  "That  new  boy  of  ours 
has  got  the  descriptive  touch.  He  keeps  his  eyes  open. 
Give  him  his  chance."  This  had  come  to  Luttrell's  ears 
through  Katherine  Halstead  by  way  of  Quin,  to  whom 
Vicary  had  repeated  them. 

"My  word!"  said  Katherine,  "it  isn't  every  new  man 
who  gets  his  chance  so  quickly.  You  have  no  idea  how 
glad  I  am."  It  was  Katherine's  gladness  as  well  as  Bel- 
lamy's praise  which  put  new  heart  into  Luttrell,  and  made 
him  try  his  hardest.  He  was  sent  on  the  strangest 
"turns,"  as  they  were  called.  He  had  to  describe  a  wed- 
ding between  an  old  man  of  ninety-two  and  an  old  woman 
of  ninety,  and  the  funeral  of  a  clown  who  had  made  the 
public  laugh  until  their  sides  ached  for  thirty  years,  and 
then  blew  out  his  brains  in  an  attack  of  melancholia  and 
was  followed  to  the  grave  by  circus  men  and  women 


150  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

from  all  parts  of  the  country — the  strangest  collection 
of  human  beings  whom  Luttrell  had  ever  seen.  He  had  to 
take  the  news  of  a  man's  arrest  on  a  charge  of  murder  to  a 
wife  who  was  giving  an  "At-Home"  in  a  suburban  house. 
He  could  never  forget  the  look  of  horror,  nor  her  cry  of 
anguish,  nor  his  own  deep  shame  at  having  to  do  such 
work  in  the  interests  of  sensational  journalism.  He  had 
to  spend  a  night  in  a  "tuppenny  doss,"  where  he  lay 
awake  for  hours  in  a  cold  sweat,  listening  to  the  breath- 
ing, the  occasional  moans,  the  restlessness  of  men  eaten 
by  vermin,  the  horrible  snoring,  the  sudden  shriek  of  ter- 
ror as  a  boy  woke  out  of  a  nightmare,  the  fight  for  breath 
of  asthmatical  old  men,  in  that  dark  dormitory  where 
five  hundred  human  beings  lay  in  box-beds  like  coffins. 
He  had  to  go  behind  the  scenes  of  a  pantomime,  and 
stand  crushed  against  the  prompter's  box,  while  crowds 
of  pretty  girls  and  coarse  fat  women  in  tights  thrust  past 
him  on  to  the  stage  and  then  came  surging  back,  with 
giggles  and  whispered  ejaculations;  and  when  the  lights 
went  out,  and  the  scenery  was  changed,  one  of  the  women 
had  put  her  hand  on  his  arm  and  said,  "Oh  my,  here's  a 
pretty  boy  who  looks  as  if  he  had  lost  his  mother.  Won't 
you  invite  us  to  supper,  dearie,  after  the  show?"  Frank 
had  excused  himself.  He  felt  horribly  ill-at-ease  among 
a  crowd  of  giggling  young  women,  who  wore  very  little 
clothing,  and  stared  at  him  with  saucy  eyes.  He  had  to 
write  a  sketch  of  a  Christmas  party  given  by  the  Salva- 
tion Army  in  Eagle  Street,  Drury  Lane,  where  the  chil- 
dren of  thieves,  murderers,  "out-of-works"  and  "unem- 
ployables"  fought,  tooth  and  nail,  for  buns  and  crackers, 
and  ate  the  feast  provided  for  them  with  the  ravenous 
hunger  of  wild  animals.  A  week  later  he  described  the 
Fancy  Dress  Ball  at  the  Mansion  House,  where  the  chil- 
dren of  the  well-to-do  showed  off  with  self -consciousness 
and  vanity,  flirted  like  little  men  and  women,  and  toyed 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  151 

with  jellies  and  trifles,  without  appetites.  Perhaps  the 
strangest  work  he  was  called  upon  to  do  was  to  take  a 
party  of  four  people — two  men  and  two  women — across 
the  Channel  and  back,  to  test  an  alleged  cure  for  sea- 
sickness. One  of  the  men  had  been  horribly  ill  each 
time.  He  was  suppressed  in  Frank's  article  by  a  sub- 
editor, who  thought  he  spoilt  the  effect  of  the  story. 
Frank  Luttrell  had  read  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets,  he 
had  had  literary  aspirations,  he  had  written  articles  for 
the  Spectator,  and  sometimes  he  laughed,  not  in  a  pleas- 
ant, happy  way,  at  the  thought  of  having  to  turn  out 
these  ridiculous  articles,  at  the  utter  lack  of  dignity  in 
his  work,  at  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  body  and  spirit. 
"I  am  prostituting  my  pen,"  he  said  to  himself,  and  then 
another  small  voice  said,  "I  am  seeing  a  lot  of  human 
nature.  It's  all  right  as  long  as  I  keep  a  sense  of  humour, 
and  don't  take  myself  seriously.  It  is  all  right  as  long 
as  Katherine  Halstead  works  on  the  Rag,  and  plays  chess 
with  me  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue." 

But  Katherine  Halstead  was  not  always  at  Shaftes- 
bury Avenue  to  play  chess  with  him.  She  too,  as  a  jour- 
nalist, had  many  evening  engagements,  and  if  he  stayed 
late  enough,  talking  alone  with  Margaret  Hubbard,  who 
seemed  glad  to  have  him,  he  would  see  her  come  in  so 
tired  that  she  would  drop  into  a  chair  and  implore 
Mother  Hubbard  to  take  off  her  hat  and  give  her,  as  she 
said,  "the  cup  that  cheers  but  does  not  inebriate."  Once 
she  said,  quite  seriously — giving  Frank  a  sudden  cold 
shiver — "I'm  not  sure  if  I  would  not  prefer  the  cup  that 
does  inebriate.  Oh,  after  a  meeting  of  the  Mothers' 
Union  at  the  Albert  Hall  I  feel  very  much  inclined  to  get 
really  drunk!  Bishops  always  have  that  effect  on  me." 

Frank  did  not  wonder  at  Margaret  Hubbard's  nick- 
name, when  he  saw  how  she  waited  on  Katherine  at 
those  times,  chafing  her  cold  hands,  getting  tea  for  her 


152          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

in  a  twinkling,  and  uncoiling  the  girl's  hair  .to  soothe 
her  aching  head.  Katherine  accepted  it  all  as  a  matter 
of  course.  She  seemed  to  regard  Mother  Hubbard  as 
her  own  private  and  special  providence.  Frank  thanked 
Heaven  with  real  piety  that  he  should  have  been  per- 
mitted into  the  intimacy  of  these  two  women's  lives. 
It  was  all  a  revelation  to  him,  something  new  and  strange 
and  delightful.  As  a  sisterless  man,  he  had  never  before 
seen  a  woman  uncoil  her  hair,  and  it  gave  him  a  curious 
thrill  of  pleasure.  He  had  never  before  seen  a  girl  slip 
on  to  the  floor,  snuggling  her  head  into  the  lap  of  another 
girl,  and  smoking  a  cigarette  in  front  of  the  fire,  in 
dreamy  enjoyment.  He  felt  that  this  experience  was 
good  for  him.  If  he  had  asked  other  people's  advice  on 
the  subject  they  might  not  have  been  so  sure. 

These  were  the  evenings  when  he  was  left  alone  with 
Mother  Hubbard.  Chris  Codrington  was  in  the  way 
of  getting  stalls  for  theatres,  and  invited  Katherine  to 
join  him.  Sometimes  she  refused — that  was  generally 
when  Frank  Luttrell  had  promised  to  go  round  for  a 
game  of  chess — but  several  times  when  Frank  had  ex- 
pected an  evening  engagement  she  consented  to  go.  Lut- 
trell arrived  one  evening  when  she  was  getting  ready 
and  she  came  into  the  room  in  her  evening  gown  of  white 
silk,  cut  low  at  the  throat,  and  with  a  rose  in  her  hair. 

She  curtseyed  before  him,  sitting  in  the  middle  of 
her  billowing  skirt,  like  a  picture  by  Brock  in  one  of  Jane 
Austen's  books. 

"Oh,"  said  Frank,  "you  are  beautiful.  You  are  like 
Cinderella  going  to  the  ball." 

Katherine  blushed  very  prettily. 

"Your  Royal  Highness  is  pleased  to  flatter  me." 

She  rose  in  her  billowing  gown  and  stood,  a  graceful 
and  slender  figure,  before  him. 

"For  that  nice  compliment  you  shall  be  privileged  to 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  153 

do  up  my  glove.  I  remember  you  said  you  wanted  prac- 
tice." 

"Oh,  rather!"  said  Frank,  and  he  held  her  arm  again 
and  bent  over  it.  She  gave  him  a  little  silver  buttonhook, 
and  he  found  the  task  almost  too  easy.  Then  Codring- 
ton  came  in,  very  handsome  in  his  evening  clothes,  and 
Luttrell  envied  him,  with  an  almost  sickening  envy.  He 
could  almost  find  it  in  his  heart  to  hate  that  man,  who 
assumed  a  kind  of  proprietorship  over  Katherine  Hal- 
stead,  and  who  was  going  to  spend  a  whole  evening  alone 
with  her,  with  the  right  of  a  courtier  to  hold  her  cloak,  to 
sit  down  by  her  side  in  a  hansom  cab,  to  have  her  face 
close  to  him  as  they  whispered  comments  on  the  play. 
He  could  see  all  those  things  vividly,  and  each  mental 
picture  was  a  pain  to  him.  He  had  never  forgotten  that 
evening  when,  after  Mother  Hubbard's  birthday  party, 
Codrington  touched  Katherine's  cheek  with  his  lips.  The 
memory  of  it  came  to  him  again  and  again — in  railway 
trains,  on  the  top  of  omnibuses,  in  London  slums,  at 
public  meetings.  By  degrees  he  had  tried  to  forget  it,  or, 
remembering,  had  persuaded  himself,  insincerely,  that 
the  kiss  had  not  been  a  sign  of  anything  but  comrade- 
ship. Katherine  was  not  to  be  judged  like  other  girls. 
She  was  a  journalist  who  lived  among  men  and  worked 
among  them.  No  doubt  she  and  Codrington  had  known 
each  other  for  years.  No  doubt  they  had  confided  little 
secrets  to  one  another,  and  had  become  almost  like 
brother  and  sister.  He  was  absurd  to  be  so  sensitive, 
so  damnably — jealous.  Jealous!  As  the  word  framed 
itself  in  his  mind  he  raised  his  head  in  a  startled  way, 
and  then  a  wave  of  colour  swept  swiftly  into  his  face.  In 
that  moment  something  had  been  revealed  to  Luttrell,  ex- 
plaining many  things  which  he  had  not  yet  understood. 

I  think  it  was  that  revelation  which  prevented  him 
from  going  quite  so  often  to  the  third  floor  of  the  book- 


154  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

seller's  shop  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue.  If  he  had  any 
inkling  that  Codrington  was  to  be  there,  he  stayed  away. 
And  sometimes,  even  when  Katherine  had  been  alone 
with  Margaret  Hubbard,  and  he  had  gone  to  the  flat,  un- 
able to  keep  away  any  longer,  he  would  plead  a  letter  to 
write,  or  some  other  business,  and  leave  so  early  that 
both  Katherine  and  Margaret  cried  out  upon  him.  The 
truth  is  that  sometimes  he  found  Katherine's  company 
too  exciting.  She  had  little  characteristics,  which,  utterly 
unknown  to  herself,  troubled  him,  and  made  him  feel 
that  he  was  not  quite  master  of  his  emotions.  She  would 
put  her  hand  on  his  for  a  moment,  when  she  came  in 
tired  and  he  waited  on  her.  She  had  a  habit  of  laughing 
into  his  eyes  when  she  quizzed  him  for  being  too  serious 
or  too  sensitive.  Once,  when  she  was  looking  at  a  pic- 
ture— one  of  Finger's  sketches — on  the  wall,  she  put  her 
face  against  his  shoulder,  and  said  he  was  a  nice  tall 
thing  to  lean  against  when  her  head  ached.  Then  she 
would  sit  on  the  floor  with  her  hands  clasped  round  her 
knees  staring  into  the  fire,  and  command  Frank  per- 
emptorily to  tell  her  about  his  boyhood  in  the  old  Rec- 
tory, and  about  his  mother,  of  whom  he  had  sometimes 
spoken  in  a  way  that  pleased  her.  All  this  was  very 
innocent,  very  simple,  very  charming  to  a  man  who,  if 
he  had  not  been  in  this  flat,  would  have  been  alone  in 
his  own  room,  or  trudging  the  streets  of  London. 

But  it  was  so  novel  to  him,  and  surprising,  that  he  felt 
sometimes  that  he  must  go  for  a  long  lonely  walk  to  cool 
his  head  and  steady  his  pulse.  It  was  at  those  times  that 
he  pleaded  letter-writing,  not  untruthfully,  for  on  the 
way  to  Kennington  Oval,  or  Peckham  Rye,  or  Clapham 
Junction,  or  some  other  place  to  which  his  long  legs  led 
him,  he  composed  mile-long  letters  to  Katherine  Hal- 
stead  which  he  posted  in  the  red  letter-box  of  his  heart. 

I  fancy  some  of  these  letters  must  have  reached  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  155. 

"addressee,"  as  the  Post  Office  guide  would  say.  Once 
after  Frank  had  left  the  flat  early  and  was  half-way  down 
the  Waterloo  Road,  Katherine  suddenly  called  out,  "My 
ears  are  burning  like  Billy-o,  Mother  Hubbard!  Some- 
body is  thinking  of  me/' 

"Now  I  wonder  who  that  can  be  ?"  said  Margaret  Hub- 
bard,  looking  across  at  her  with  an  innocent  expression 
which  was  not  quite  natural 

This  time  Katherine's  cheeks  began  to  burn,  as  well  as 
her  ears,  and  she  said,  rather  hastily,  "You  are  an  absurd 
Mother  Hubbard,  sometimes,  aren't  you,  my  dear?" 

On  the  evenings  when  Frank  found  himself  alone  with 
Margaret,  he  felt  no  such  emotional  excitement  as  when 
Katherine  was  there.  There  was  something  very  restful 
in  the  mere  presence  of  that  woman  of  thirty-six.  She 
had  the  gift  of  silence  as  well  as  of  sympathy.  Often 
these  two  would  sit  for  an  hour  or  more  without  speak- 
ing a  word,  Margaret  Hubbard  doing  her  crochet  or  read- 
ing a  book,  Frank  deep  in  a  chair  with  his  hands  behind 
his  head  and  his  long  legs  stuck  out,  staring  at  the  fire. 
Sometimes  Margaret  would  turn  her  eyes  towards  him 
and  look  at  the  boyish,  good-looking  head,  with  its  keen, 
delicate  profile  upon  which  the  firelight  flickered;  and 
at  such  times  her  face  softened,  and  into  her  eyes  crept 
the  look  of  motherhood  which  had,  perhaps,  suggested 
her  charming  nickname  to  someone  who  had  seen  it. 
Once  or  twice  at  such  times,  during  recent  days,  she  gave 
a  quiet  sigh.  Perhaps  she  could  not  have  explained  to 
herself  why  the  sight  of  that  sensitive,  silent  boy  in 
the  room  stirred  some  chord  in  her  heart,  and  awakened 
an  old  melody  that  was  melancholy-sweet  in  its  cadences. 

Into  the  silence  of  the  room  came  the  murmurous 
sound  of  the  traffic  in  the  streets,  the  tinkling  of  cab- 
bells  passing  down  Shaftesbury  Avenue,  the  sharp  click- 
clack  of  horses'  hoofs  on  hard  asphalt,  the  swishing 


156  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

noise  of  rain  beating  down  on  the  pavement  below,  ana 
the  rattling  tune  of  a  piano-organ  coming  faintly  through 
the  distance.  In  such  a  softly-lighted  room  in  London, 
in  such  a  quietude  after  a  day's  work,  with  the  noise 
of  humanity  heard  from  afar,  a  man  and  woman,  alone 
together,  are  drawn  close;  without  words  they  under- 
stand, and,  if  they  speak,  it  is  sometimes  to  confide  the 
secret  things  of  the  heart,  which  in  daylight,  or  in  an- 
other environment,  would  not  be  revealed.  It  is  at  such 
times  that  spiritual  friendships  are  made,  not  always 
without  danger.  Many  a  man  has  found  himself  in  the 
court  where  a  golden  anchor  hangs  above  the  seat  of 
justice — not  a  symbol  of  hope — because  he  has  sat  too 
many  evenings  with  a  woman,  staring  at  the  fire  in  a 
quiet  room,  and  listening  to  the  tinkling  cab-bells  in 
the  street  below,  and  telling  those  secret  things  of  the 
heart,  which  he  had  hidden  from  all  others.  In  Frank's 
case  there  was  no  danger,  to  himself,  but  a  source  of 
strength  and  consolation  in  those  quiet  hours. 

He  often  spoke  to  Margaret  Hubbard  about  his  boy- 
hood, as  though  it  were  a  far  distant  thing  from  which 
he  was  divided  by  a  wide  gulf  of  years ;  and  in  his  boyish 
way,  which  showed  that  it  was  not  so  far  distant  after 
all,  he  told  her  how  much  he  had  suffered  from  being 
born  with  an  incurable  shyness  and  sensitiveness,  which 
had  locked  him  up  in  loneliness,  away  from  his  fellow- 
creatures,  and  had  caused  him  real  torture  when,  as  now, 
he  had  to  face  the  world,  and  plunge  into  an  active  life 
of  small  adventures  in  which  a  brazen  face  is  essential 
for  success.  In  answer  to  these  confidences,  Margaret 
Hubbard,  who  understood,  gave  him  sane  and  wise  ad- 
vice, and  comforted  him  with  words  of  brave  spirit, 
telling  him  to  be  patient  and  plucky,  and  if  he  suffered, 
as  he  still  must,  to  hide  it,  and  force  himself  not  to 
falter.  Then  he  spoke  of  his  father  and  mother,  making 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  157 

word-portraits  of  them,  idealised  no  doubt,  and  touched 
with  tenderness,  but  yet  showing  the  little  weaknesses, 
the  absent-mindedness,  the  intensely  reserved  nature  of 
the  country  rector,  and  the  highly-strung  spirit  and  occa- 
sional rebelliousness  of  the  mother  whose  imagination 
had  been  shut  in  by  a  narrow  life. 

"I  should  love  to  know  your  mother,"  said  Margaret 
Hubbard.  "She  must  be  a  good  and  beautiful  woman." 
And  Frank  said,  "Yes,  I  am  sure  you  two  would  under- 
stand each  other.  She  often  writes  about  you  in  answer 
to  my  letters." 

From  Margaret  he  learnt  some  of  the  things  he  wanted 
to  know  about  herself  and  Katherine.  In  Fleet  Street 
he  had  met  many  new  people,  and  it  always  seemed  to 
him  that  they  could  be  only  half  known  because  they 
seldom  spoke  of  their  early  life.  It  was  like  beginning 
a  novel  at  the  middle  chapter,  or  reading  one  of  those 
modern  novels  which  plunge  straight  into  the  middle  of 
a  plot  without  explaining  the  precedents  of  their  char- 
acters. He  was  glad  to  know,  therefore,  from  Margaret 
Hubbard  why  she  and  Katherine  Halstead  lived  in  a  flat 
over  a  bookseller's  shop  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue,  what 
chain  of  facts  had  led  both  these  women  to  the  big  room 
rilled  with  second-hand  furniture,  where  now,  as  a  new 
link  in  their  chain  of  life,  he  sat  with  his  hands  behind 
his  head. 

Margaret  told  her  story  not  all  at  one  time,  but  giving 
little  glimpses  of  her  past  as  some  casual  word  reminded 
her  of  them.  She  had  been  to  Girton,  but  had  not  taken 
her  degree.  She  had  been  to  Cheltenham,  and  had  been 
captain  of  the  hockey  team,  when  a  hockey  girl  was  as 
much  ridiculed  in  the  comic  papers  as  a  militant  suf- 
fragette of  more  recent  times.  She  was  the  daughter  of 
an  army  man — yes,  the  same  Hubbard  who  defended 
the  pass  against  the  Afghans  in  '83 — a  gallant  man  to  the 


158  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

last,  who  fought  a  more  terrible  enemy  than  the  fuzzy- 
wuzzie  with  a  stoic  courage.  He  died  of  cancer,  and 
Margaret  Hubbard  nursed  him  single-handed,  learning 
the  two  great  lessons  of  courage  and  death.  Her  mother 
had  died  when  she  was  a  child;  and,  when  the  Colonel 
went,  she  was  left  alone,  receiving  the  cold  charity  of 
rich  cousins.  Of  course,  she  was  proud.  A  soldier's 
daughter  is  always  proud.  She  had  quarrelled  violently 
with  the  cousins,  and  had  become  the  governess  of  a 
newspaper  proprietor's  children.  Three  months  later, 
she  started  as  a  woman  journalist  at  two  pounds  a  week, 
on  the  paper  which  belonged  to  the  man  who  had  played 
at  bears  with  her  one  day  among  a  nursery  full  of 
children,  and  had  then  given  her  the  great  chance.  Oh, 
she  had  had  a  rough  time  like  most  of  them.  The  pro- 
prietor had  sold  his  paper,  and  she  had  been  the  first  to 
go,  under  the  new  regime.  She  knew  what  it  was  to  be 
hungry,  really  hungry.  Then  she  had  got  on  to  another 
paper,  where  the  news-editor  had  constantly  insulted 
her,  and  had  almost  broken  her  spirit.  But,  one  day 
when  he  swore  at  her  with  a  coarse  oath,  the  old  Colonel's 
heart  leapt  into  her,  and  she  knocked  the  man  down 
with  his  own  office  ruler.  The  old  hockey  training  was 
useful.  She  had  a  strong  arm,  and  the  man  went  down 
like  a  ninepin.  Very  wicked  of  her,  no  doubt,  but  rather 
glorious ! 

Margaret  Hubbard  laughed  at  the  thought  of  it,  and 
felt  her  muscles  again.  "They're  a  bit  flabby,"  she  said, 
regretfully.  Of  course,  she  had  been  dismissed.  The 
editor  thought  it  might  be  his  turn  next,  although  he 
was  rather  glad  that  his  subordinate  had  been  "outed." 
Another  fearful  struggle  with  poverty,  another  billet  on 
another  newspaper,  another  dismissal — this  time  for  re- 
fusing to  puff  a  poisonous  wretch  who  called  herself  a 
"beauty-doctor"  and  who  spent  large  sums  in  advertise- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  159 

ments,  until  the  police  got  upon  her  track.  She  had 
been  on  two  other  papers,  doing  ordinary  reporters' 
work,  attending  meetings,  rushing  and  scurrying  about 
to  bazaars  and  society  weddings,  learning  a  lot  about 
fools  and  knaves,  wearing  herself  to  skin  and  bones,  but 
getting  as  much  fun  out  of  the  life  as  she  could,  making, 
oh,  ever  so  many  friends  among  "the  boys/'  who  had  all 
been  good  to  her.  And  now,  for  a  time,  she  had  got  into 
a  more  or  less  peaceful  sanctuary,  as  fashion  editor  on  the 
Rag.  Bellamy  was  very  good  to  her.  He  remembered 
that,  once  on  a  time,  they  had  done  "turns"  together  on 
rival  Rags  with  good  comradeship  before  he  had  come 
into  his  kingdom. 

"How  long  it  will  last,  of  course,  remains  to  be  seen," 
she  said. 

"Why  should  it  not  last?"  said  Frank.  "At  least, 
Bellamy  will  never  act  the  part  of  a  cad." 

"Oh,  I  can  trust  little  Silas,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard ; 
"but  in  Fleet  Street  things  never  stand  still.  The  spirit 
of  change  is  its  law  of  life." 

Katherine's  history  did  not  go  back  so  far.  She  had 
only  been  in  Fleet  Street  two  years,  and  this  was  her 
first  paper.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  barrister — Hilary 
Halstead,  the  brilliant  K.C.,  who,  after  starving  without 
briefs  for  ten  years,  while  his  poor  frivolous  little  wife 
had  fretted  for  pretty  frocks  and  the  luxuries  to  which 
she  had  been  accustomed  in  her  girlhood,  burst  into  fame 
and  fortune  by  his  defence  of  Kitty  Verlaine,  accused  of 
poisoning  her  husband.  Just  when  Mrs.  Halstead  could 
have  had  as  many  pretty  frocks  as  her  heart  desired, 
she  was  taken  away  to  the  land  where  frocks,  it  is  said, 
are  not  worn.  Halstead,  left  a  widower  with  a  tiny  girl 
who  was  her  mother  in  miniature,  worked  feverishly,  and 
— un fortunately — played  feverishly  when  he  was  not 
working.  A  man  of  irresistible  charm,  he  was  the  leader 


160          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

of  the  sporting  coterie  in  London  Society,  which  revived 
the  old  gambling  traditions  of  the  Georgian  period,  play- 
ing for  high  stakes  at  bridge,  and  making  big  books  on  the 
turf.  Halstead's  luck  was  villainous;  and  the  high  fees 
which  he  received  for  his  briefs  were  seldom  enough  to 
pay  his  debts.  The  excitement  of  his  life  wore  him  out, 
and  he  followed  his  wife  when  Katherine  was  only 
twelve,  leaving  her  penniless.  She  was  adopted  by  an 
aunt  who  wrote  regularly  for  the  Family  Herald  and  the 
Girl's  Own  Paper,  a  kind,  sentimental  old  maid  who,  like 
early- Victorian  ladies,  kept  a  bundle  of  love-letters  tied 
up  in  blue  silk  which  she  watered  with  her  tears  on  the 
anniversary  of  the  death  of  a  young  officer  who  had 
been  killed  in  a  war  in  India  thirty  years  ago.  With  this 
aunt  Katherine  had  led  a  dull,  "genteel,"  rather  self- 
absorbed  life  in  Royal  Avenue,  Chelsea,  reading  om- 
nivorously,  dominating  the  maiden  lady  and  the  faithful 
maid-servant,  both  of  whom  waited  on  her  hand  and 
foot,  doing  their  best  to  spoil  her,  and  not  hiding  from 
her  their  conviction  that  she  was  the  most  beautiful  and 
the  most  talented  young  person  in  the  world. 

Katherine  had  not  been  spoilt.  From  her  father  she 
had  inherited  a  good  and  a  gay  heart,  and  a  keen  sense 
of  humour  which  preserved  her  mental  balance.  From 
the  books  which  she  read  without  guidance  or  hin- 
drance>  she  had  acquired  a  great  deal  of  useful  knowl- 
edge outside  the  range  of  an  ordinary  high-school  educa- 
tion, and  a  good  many  false  ideas  about  men  and  women 
and  life,  and  a  strangely-concocted  religion  of  her  own 
— which  troubled  her  aunt,  who  was  a  High  Church- 
woman — in  which  pluck,  sentiment,  and  the  boyish  code 
of  "playing  the  game"  were  the  chief  ingredients.  At 
nineteen  years  of  age  she  walked  into  a  newspaper  of- 
fice, and  demanded  to  see  the  editor.  Fortunately,  or 
perhaps  unfortunately,  the  editor  was  passing  the  in- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  161 

quiry  office  when  she  asked  for  him,  and,  seeing  a  pretty 
girl's  face,  thought  that  it  might  offer  him  an  agreeable 
five  minutes  between  interviews  with  two  men  whom 
he  was  going  to  dismiss  for  premature  old  age  and  over- 
grown salaries.  Katherine  was  very  rude  to  him  when 
he  told  her,  a  little  brutally  no  doubt,  some  plain  truths 
about  school-girls  applying  for  positions  on  great  London 
newspapers.  She  said  that  she  was  surprised  that  the 
editor  of  a  great  London  newspaper  did  not  know  how 
to  behave  like  a  gentleman.  The  editor  sat  back  in  his 
chair  and  laughed  heartily.  He  had  never  been  spoken 
to  like  that  in  his  life.  He  rather  liked  it  for  its  novelty. 
After  some  further  conversation,  in  which  Katherine  at- 
tempted to  persuade  him  that  she  could  do  anything  he 
wanted  from  writing  a  leading  article  to  a  serial  story, 
she  put  her  hand  on  his  arm  and  said,  "Now,  you  will  be 
good,  won't  you?  Because  I  am  not  going  to  leave  this 
room  until  you  put  me  on  to  the  staff." 

Then  he  had  spoken  to  her  rather  seriously,  and  told 
her  what  Fleet  Street  meant  to  a  girl,  and  how  utterly 
ignorant  she  was  of  everything  that  would  make  her 
useful  as  a  journalist.  Upon  this  Katherine  burst  into 
tears,  and  the  editor,  who  had  hammered  many  men  in 
the  course  of  his  career,  walked  up  and  down  the  room 
wondering  what  he  could  do  for  this  extraordinary  young 
creature  whose  tearful  eyes  were  so  full  of  disappoint- 
ment and  reproach. 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  "if  you  come  to  me  in  two  years' 
time,  with  a  knowledge  of  shorthand,  and  if  you  promise 
not  to  shed  tears  on  my  blotting-paper,  I  will  give  you 
something  to  do." 

"Is  that  a  bargain  ?"  said  Katherine,  radiantly. 

"Yes,"  said  the  editor,  who  was  Silas  Bellamy,  sitting 
in  another  chair  in  another  office. 


162  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Well,  if  you  don't  mind,  I'll  have  it  in  black  and 
white,"  said  the  girl. 

Bellamy  was  startled.  He  began  to  think  that  this 
young  person  was  not  so  young  as  she  looked.  He 
drafted  out  an  agreement  for  her  on  the  lines  laid  down, 
with  a  great  deal  of  solemnity  which  he  found  quite 
amusing.  Then  he  signed  the  document,  and  handed 
it  to  her. 

"Don't  you  go  showing  that  about/'  he  said,  "or  my 
reputation  will  be  blasted." 

"No  one  shall  see  it  until  I  come  here  in  two  years' 
time,"  she  said. 

"I  don't  believe  you  will  come,"  said  Bellamy.  "You'll 
be  engaged  to  a  nice  boy  long  before  that." 

"Perhaps,"  said  Katherine.  "Perhaps  not.  Anyhow,  I 
am  very  much  obliged  to  you.  Good-morning,  Mr.  Bel- 
lamy." 

She  shook  hands  with  him,  and  he  escorted  her  very 
politely  to  the  door.  Here  she  looked  back  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  said,  "I  am  sorry  I  said  you  did  not  know  how 
to  behave  like  a  gentleman.  That  was  quite  rude  of  me, 
and  it  was  utterly  untrue." 

"You  relieve  my  mind  infinitely,"  said  Bellamy. 
"Thanks  so  much." 

During  the  two  years  that  passed  Bellamy  forgot  all 
about  that  visit,  until  one  day  he  received  a  lady's  card 
and  a  letter  marked  "Private."  The  name  on  the  card 
was  unknown  to  him,  except  that  it  stirred  some  vague 
memory;  but  on  opening  the  envelope  he  saw  the  half 
sheet  of  note-paper  with  a  three-line  agreement  signed 
by  himself.  Then  he  remembered,  and  laughed  quietly 
to  himself  again  and  again  as  he  stared  at  the  piece  of 
paper. 

When  Katherine  Halstead  was  shown  in  he  was  almost 
serious. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  163 

"So  you  have  not  got  engaged  to  a  nice  boy  ?"  he  asked. 

"No/'  said  Katherine.  "I  couldn't  find  one.  So  I 
learnt  shorthand.  I  can  do  it  verbatim — here's  my  cer- 
tificate if  you  don't  believe  me." 

"Oh,  I  do,"  said  Bellamy. 

"And  here  are  some  of  my  cuttings.  You  will  see  I 
have  had  articles  on  all  sorts  of  subjects  in  all  sorts 
of  papers." 

Bellamy  read  them  for  ten  minutes  while  Katherine 
had  tea,  which  he  ordered  for  her. 

Then  he  looked  up  and  said,  "This  is  all  very  well — 
quite  nice  and  bright — but  that  agreement  of  ours  was 
rather  loosely  drawn  up.  It  referred  to  a  position  on 
this  paper.  Isn't  that  so?" 

"Yes,"  said  Katherine.    "Why  not?" 

"Well,"  said  Bellamy,  "I  don't  mind  telling  you  in 
confidence — I  know  you  won't  repeat  it — that  I  am  chang- 
ing over  to  the  other  side  of  the  street.  I  am  going  to 
control  another  paper.  So,  you  see,  this  agreement 
doesn't  apply.  I'm  sorry.  .  .  .  Have  you  finished  your 
tea?" 

For  one  moment  Katherine  stared  at  him  in  a  serious, 
searching  way,  which  made  him  a  little  uneasy.  Then 
she  said,  "Is  that  playing  the  game,  do  you  think?" 

"Oh,  if  you  put  it  like  that "  said  Bellamy.  Then 

he  laughed  and  said,  "My  dear  child,  I  don't  want  to 
evade  a  solemn  compact  by  legal  hair-splitting.  You  are 
quite  right,  and  I'll  be  hanged  if  I  don't  fulfill  the  bond 
.  .  .  although  I  am  perfectly  sure  I  shall  regret  the  little 
joke  to  my  dying  day." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  so,"  said  Katherine,  melting.  "I'll 
do  my  very  best.  I  promise  I  will!" 

So  that  was  how  Katherine  came  to  Fleet  Street,  and 
how  she  fell  into  the  company  of  Margaret  Hubbard,  and 


164  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

how  after  the  death  of  the  maiden  aunt  she  shared  rooms 
with  this  good  friend  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue. 

Margaret  Hubbard  told  the  story  with  delightful  hu- 
mour, and  Frank  treasured  it  in  his  heart.  It  was  late 
one  evening  when  the  tale  was  told,  and  the  fire  had 
burned  dim,  and  the  kettle  which  was  waiting  for  Kath- 
erine's  return  from  another  gala  night — foreign  kings 
were  coming  to  London  too  frequently — had  gone  off 
the  boil.  Frank  and  Margaret  were  sitting  on  each  side 
of  the  fire,  and  their  quiet  laughter  had  made  a  merry 
duet.  Then  Margaret  became  serious,  and  said  rather 
sadly — 

"Poor  Kitty!  Poor  little  bird!  She  ought  never  to 
have  come  into  such  a  life.  I  am  sometimes  afraid " 

"Of  what?"  said  Frank. 

Margaret  Hubbard  did  not  answer  his  question  di- 
rectly, but  she  leant  forward  with  her  hands  in  her  lap. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "there  is  so  much  danger  of  profes- 
sional women  missing  the  good  things  of  life — the  only 
things  that  matter.  I  am  not  one  of  the  old-fashioned 
'women  at  home'  dogmatists.  The  laws  of  social  econ- 
omy, and  their  very  nature,  force  some  women  to  go  out 
and  work,  and  the  world  is  all  the  better  for  it.  But, 
somehow  or  other,  women  have  to  pay  a  heavy  price 
for  liberty  .  .  .  some  of  them.  They  lose  caste.  Oh  yes; 
I  have  felt  that  many  times.  Also,  they  lose  their  fem- 
ininity— horrid,  detestable  word;  and,  because  they  see 
and  know  and  say  and  do  things  which  are  outside  the 
range  of  the  domestic  woman's  knowledge,  they  are  des- 
pised, perhaps  a  little  feared  ...  by  men  as  well  as 
women.  And  that  is  apt  to  make  us  bitter  and  rather 
hard.  Because,  you  see — perhaps  you  don't — that,  though 
we  lose  our  femininity,  we  keep  our  womanhood.  We  are 
still  women,  with  the  desires  and  dreams  of  womanhood. 
It  is  curious  how  the  professional  woman,  meeting  many 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  165 

men,  working  among  them,  goods  friends  with  them,  is 
so  often  left  solitary.  The  boys  who  have  sat  in  her 
rooms  go  away  one  by  one  and  marry — other  women. 
They  have  given  her  their  confidences,  have  been  glad 
in  their  time  of  her  comradeship,  but  other  girls —  the 
feminine  girls — get  their  hearts.  Oh,  it  is  not  good  to 
grow  old  alone  .  .  .  and  sometimes  I  think  that  Kitty 
may  be  passed  over  in  the  same  way,  and  that  all  her 
beauty  will  gradually  fade,  that  all  her  bright  spirits 
will  wither,  and  that  all  the  promise  of  her  womanhood 
will  bear  no  fruit — but  disappointment  and  the  dry  husks 
of  hope." 

As  though  ashamed  of  having  said  too  much,  and  re- 
vealed herself  too  nakedly  to  him,  a  wave  of  colour 
swept  into  her  face  and  she  said,  "Forgive  me,  Frank. 
I  did  not  mean  to  speak  these  things/' 

Frank  was  startled  and  extraordinarily  moved. 

He  leant  forward  and  put  his  head  on  her  own,  big, 
beautiful  hand — a  working  hand — and  said  rather  husk- 
ily, "Mother  Hubbard!  Mother  Hubbard!" 

And  he  was  surprised,  as  well  as  moved.  Surely 
Katherine  would  not  be  passed  over?  Surely  Margaret 
Hubbard  knew  about  Christopher  Codrington  and  his 
understanding — whatever  it  might  be — with  Katherine 
Halstead.  Perhaps,  after  all,  Codrington's  kiss  had  not 
been  the  sign  of  ownership.  In  that  case — his  heart  leapt 
within  him — and  then  went  down,  right  into  his  boots. 

For  at  the  door  was  Katherine  Halstead,  with  her  hand 
on  Codrington's  arm. 

"Oh,  we  are  weary,  weary!"  she  said.  "Chris  and  I 
have  been  doing  the  gala  night :  and  it  was  all  very  won- 
derful, and  all  very  beautiful,  and  I  could  not  describe 
all  the  dresses  I  saw  and  envied  until  I  could  cry.  Chris 
has  fallen  in  love  with  Tetrazzini,  and  has  been  writing 
prose  poetry  about  her.  But,  oh — I  want  my  supper  I" 


166  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Codrington  taking  off  a  frock  overcoat  said,  "Hulloh, 
Luttrell,  you  here?" 

And  Frank  said,  "Yes  .  .  .  but  I'm  just  going.  .  .  . 
Good-night,  Mother  Hubbard." 


CHAPTER   X 

THERE  was  one  man  in  Fleet  Street  who  had  a  power- 
ful influence  upon  Frank  Luttrell.  This  was  Edmund 
Grattan,  the  Irishman,  who  had  come  home  from  the 
Near  East  on  the  night  of  Mother  Hubbard's  birthday 
party.  He  had  been  round  to  the  flat  several  times  since 
then,  and  he  had  struck  up  a  warm  friendship  with  the 
younger  man.  Frank  Luttrell  had  been  strongly  attracted 
towards  him  from  the  first.  The  little  man's  whimsicality 
and  wit  and  tenderness,  the  poetry  and  colour  of  his 
Celtic  spirit,  the  strange  romance  of  his  life,  made  an 
irresistible  appeal  to  Frank's  imagination.  Grattan 
seemed  to  him  typical  of  the  modern  adventurer,  one  of 
that  race  of  men  who,  since  the  day  of  the  jongleurs 
and  troubadours  have  gone  a-wandering  in  the  world, 
from  city  to  city,  from  country  to  country,  coming  in 
close  touch  with  the  drama  of  life,  seeing  human  passions 
in  every  phase  of  heroism  and  brutality. 

For  twenty-five  years  Grattan  had  been  a  spectator  of 
every  great  conflict  between  one  nation  and  another,  or 
one  race  and  another.  In  India,  Egypt,  and  South  Africa 
he  had  been  sun-baked,  fever-stricken,  wounded,  and 
taken  prisoner.  In  the  Graeco-Turkish,  Spanish-Ameri- 
can, and  Russo-Japanese  wars,  Grattan  had  been  special 
correspondent,  doctor,  surgeon,  priest,  cook,  sailor,  and 
jester.  Many  a  time  he  had  told  Irish  fairy-tales  in 
French,  Italian,  Spanish,  German,  and  in  a  bastard  cos- 
mopolitan lingo  of  his  own  concoction,  to  men  starving 
and  freezing  in  rain-soddened  tents,  and  to  men  dying 
by  inches  in  camp-hospitals.  He  had  sung  Celtic  folk- 
songs to  the  wild  hill-tribes  of  India,  who  had  reprieved 

167 


168  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

him  from  death  because  his  plaintive  melodies,  sung  with 
a  dauntless  spirit,  had  touched  some  chord  of  sentiment  in 
the  hearts  of  brave  fighting  men  not  without  chivalry  and 
wild  poetry  of  their  own.  As  an  Irishman  and  a  Catholic, 
he  had  heard  the  confessions  of  soldiers  on  the  bloody 
battlefields  of  South  Africa,  and  had  promised  to  tell 
them  to  a  good-hearted  priest  who,  no  doubt,  would  give 
them  absolution  and  say  a  mass  for  the  soul  now  strug- 
gling to  escape  from  a  tortured  body.  It  was  uncanonical 
doubtless,  but  comforting,  to  Irish  boys  who  do  not  like 
to  die  like  dogs  in  a  ditch.  He  had  also  got  very,  very 
drunk  on  the  best  wines  and  the  vilest  spirits  in  the  world 
with  many  comrades  who  had  now  gone  to  the  great 
Valhalla.  He  had  sung  "Father  O'Flynn"  to  Zulus  into 
whose  hands  he  had  wandered  on  a  dark  night,  and  who, 
not  understanding  a  single  word,  had  been  moved  to 
guttural  grunts  expressive  of  deep  emotion,  by  what  they 
thought,  perhaps,  was  a  war-song,  or  a  hymn  to  the  white 
men's  Ju-ju.  And  the  hero  of  these  adventures,  who 
had  looked  into  the  face  of  death  more  times  than  he 
could  remember,  was  a  little  man  of  five  feet  five,  who 
looked  as  if  he  were  a  third-class  clerk  in  the  Education 
Department,  or  a  haberdasher  who  put  his  initials  at  the 
bottom  of  accounts  when  the  young  ladies  called  out 
"Sign." 

Grattan  had  been  behind  the  scenes  of  many  revolu- 
tionary movements  in  Russia  and  the  Near  East.  Like 
most  Irishmen,  he  was  always  "agin  the  Government" 
and  on  the  side  of  revolt.  Any  band  of  men  had  but  to 
proclaim  the  sacred  name  of  Liberty,  and  Grattan  was 
with  them  heart  and  soul,  eager  to  attend  their  secret 
meetings,  nor  shirking  their  company  when  they  de- 
fended barricades  against  the  forces  of  law  and  order, 
or  autocracy  and  tyranny.  That  trait  of  his  character 
had  led  him  into  trouble  more  times  than  he  could  count ; 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  169 

for  it  often  happened  that  he  got  too  far  entangled  in  a 
revolutionary  cause  to  do  his  duty  as  a  special  corre- 
spondent to  English  newspapers,  which,  in  foreign  af- 
fairs at  least,  endeavour  to  get  impartial  news  and  views. 
Through  the  revolutionary  days  in  Russia  he  had  been 
so  red-hot  in  his  reports  that  he  had  been  conducted  over 
the  border  by  Russian  officials  and  relieved  of  the  post 
on  the  paper  he  was  then  serving.  Finding  himself  un- 
attached, he  had  crossed  into  Russia  again,  had  been  ar- 
rested at  a  meeting  of  anarchists — and  only  escaped  the 
prisons  of  Riga  by  a  cable  sent  to  the  Russian  Ministry 
by  the  Foreign  Secretary  in  England  who  had  a  personal 
interest  in  the  strange  little  man  who  had  more  than  once 
brought  important  political  information  to  the  Foreign 
Office. 

When  there  were  no  big  or  little  wars  on  foot,  Grattan 
was  generally  on  a  loose  string  in  England,  and  consoled 
himself  by  championing  the  cause  of  Women's  Suffrage, 
the  Unemployed,  and  of  any  other  little  movement  of 
revolt  and  unrest  which  he  could  find  in  the  great  city 
of  London.  He  knew  the  strangest  men  and  women  in 
the  world.  He  had  interviewed  kings  and  emperors  in 
many  languages;  he  had  personal  friendships  in  the 
courts  of  Europe;  he  was  a  hero  among  the  social  rebels 
of  many  nations ;  he  sent  "Christmas  and  birthday  pres- 
ents to  the  wives  and  children  of  men  who  were  in  hid- 
ing for  political  or  criminal  offences,  and  he  had  the  key 
to  the  doors  of  Bohemia — that  cosmopolitan  republic 
which  owns  allegiance  to  no  king,  and  to  no  laws  but 
those  of  liberty,  of  poverty,  and  of  humanity.  What  im- 
pressed Frank  most  in  his  reading  of  Grattan's  character, 
after  many  conversations  with  him  in  which  something  of 
"iis  life-story  had  been  revealed,  was  that,  with  all  his 
stronger  and  varied  knowledge  of  life  in  its  most  brutal 
and  passionate  and  tragic  aspects,  he  had  a  remarkable 


i;o  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

simplicity  of  spirit.  It  was  almost  true  to  say  of  the 
Irishman  that  he  had  the  heart  of  a  child.  He  delighted 
in  telling  fairy-stories  delicate  and  beautiful  in  fancy,  and 
often  among  a  group  of  men  who,  like  himself,  knew  the 
coarse  realities  of  life  he  would  say  as  he  had  said  in 
Mother  Hubbard's  flat,  "Come,  let  us  be  little  children  for 
a  while.  Once  upon  a  time,"  and  then  he  would  tell  some 
old  tale  of  Celtic  folk-lore,  or  of  Oriental  mythology; 
and,  strangely  enough,  his  comrades,  hard-headed  men, 
perhaps,  men  who  certainly  came  face  to  face  with  the 
tough  problems  of  real  life,  would  fall  into  his  mood, 
and  smoke  their  pipes  silently  while  he  held  them  spell- 
bound by  some  fantasy  as  light  as  an  air-bubble  about  a 
princess  with  a  glass  heart,  or  a  king  who  could  not 
laugh,  or  a  wandering  fiddler  who  could  make  the  "Weary 
Willies"  of  the  world  dance  to  his  fiddling. 

Grattan  asked  Frank  round  to  his  rooms  one  evening 
for  a  pipe  and  a  yarn ;  and,  as  it  was  on  an  evening  when 
Katherine  was  down  for  the  dresses  at  an  Embassy  re- 
ception, he  was  glad  of  the  invitation.  The  address  was 
3O5A  Newport  Buildings ;  and  Frank,  whose  knowledge 
of  London  geography  was  still  limited,  had  some  diffi- 
culty in  finding  his  way  there.  He  found  the  place  at  the 
back  of  a  narrow  and  squalid  street  in  Soho,  where  he 
stayed  for  five  minutes  to  watch  the  progress  of  a  fight  be- 
tween two  foreign  Jews  and  three  women.  For  a  moment 
it  occurred  to  him  that  he  was  called  on  to  intervene,  ac- 
cording to  the  old-fashioned  laws  of  chivalry,  which  or- 
dained the  rescue  of  fair  ladies  in  distress.  In  one  sense 
of  the  word  the  ladies  were  certainly  fair.  They  were 
blonde  German  women  with  pink-painted  faces.  But 
Frank's  right  arm  was  not  needed  in  their  defence.  Stout 
women,  with  faces  aflame  with  passion  (to  say  nothing 
of  the  paint),  they  knocked  the  two  Jews  about  until 
they  whined  for  mercy.  A  crowd  of  foreigners  of  many 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  171 

nationalities  and  of  no  nationality  looked  on  hilariously 
until,  at  the  sight  of  two  stolid  English  policemen  who 
thrust  their  way  into  the  alley,  they  scuttled  into  side 
courts.  The  Jews  also  fled  with  scratched  and  bleeding 
faces,  and  the  German  women,  arranging  their  front 
hair,  made  their  way  slowly  from  the  scene  of  victory. 

Frank  took  advantage  of  the  policemen's  arrival  to 
ask  them  the  way  to  Newport  Buildings;  and,  though 
they  eyed  him  suspiciously,  they  gave  him  the  necessary 
direction.  It  was  a  big  block  of  grim  and  ugly  buildings 
divided  into  courts  like  workmen's  dwellings,  and  with 
iron  staircases  leading  to  the  iron  balconies  of  each  storey. 
On  some  of  these  balconies  there  were  white  and  col- 
oured garments  hanging  out  to  dry,  women's  petticoats 
and  other  things  which  were  not  meant  for  the  curious 
eye.  Here  and  there,  on  some  of  the  balconies,  frowsy 
women  leant  over  the  railings,  shouting  to  each  other  in 
shrill  voices,  and  breaking  into  cackling  laughter  after 
some  triumph  of  repartee.  On  one  of  the  balconies  was  a 
girl  in  agreeable  contrast  to  the  frowsy  women.  She 
had  raven  hair  and  a  pretty,  piquant,  Southern-looking 
face,  and  she  was  neatly  dressed  in  a  spotless  white 
blouse  and  dark  skirt.  She  was  singing  to  herself  in 
Italian  the  sweet  and  haunting  hymn  of  "Santa  Lucia" ; 
and  at  the  end  of  each  verse  she  called  out  "Dolci !  Dolci ! 
Carissima!"  to  a  bird  piping  to  her  tune  in  a  wicker 
cage. 

In  the  courtyard  itself  a  number  of  children  were  play- 
ing strange  hopping  games,  and  melodramas  in  dark  door- 
ways. They  were  white-faced,  dark-eyed  children,  de- 
cently clad  for  the  most  part,  but  with  touches  of  colour 
here  and  there — a  green  silk  skirt,  a  pink  kerchief  in  the 
hair,  a  short  velveteen  jacket,  or  a  brown  fur  cap — which 
seemed  to  show  that,  although  they  lived  in  a  London 
slum,  they  were  not  of  English  blood.  Frank  listened  ta 


172  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

some  of  them  talking.  It  was  a  babel  of  tongues  with 
ejaculations  and  shrill  cries  in  different  languages.  "Ac- 
cidenti!"  "Crenom!"  "Ach,  Hebe  Gott!"  "Oh,  crikey!" 
with  a  flow  of  words  in  some  strange  cosmopolitan  patois 
mixed  with  Cockney  dialect. 

In  one  corner  of  the  court  a  row  of  children  sat  on  a 
doorstep.  One  of  them  was  a  crippled  boy  with  a 
hunched  back  and  long  legs  as  thin  as  his  crutches,  and 
with  a  pallid,  pinched  face  in  which  two  dark  eyes  stared 
out  woefully  and  wistfully.  In  front  of  this  small  audi- 
ence on  an  upturned  box  sat  a  shrivelled-up  little  man 
in  black.  He  was  playing  a  flute  with  quick  fingers.  The 
melody  came  piping  through  the  courtyard,  a  swift,  fan- 
tastic tune,  mirthful  in  its  infinite  variations  on  one  air, 
yet  melancholy  in  its  minor  cadences.  Three  cats,  lean 
and  hungry-looking  creatures,  sat  in  front  of  the  children, 
watching  the  flute-player  with  their  green  eyes ;  and,  see- 
ing this  strange  little  group,  Frank  was  vaguely  reminded 
of  some  German  fairy-tale.  Like  the  Pied  Piper  of 
Hamelin,  the  man  with  the  flute  was  calling  to  the  souls 
of  the  children ;  and  they  sat  listening  to  the  weird  mel- 
ody quite  motionless,  as  though  enchanted  by  it. 

Frank  went  up  one  of  the  iron  staircases  in  one  of  the 
blocks,  after  asking  for  305 A  from  a  small  boy  whose 
nasal  twang  proclaimed  him  to  be  a  true-born  Briton. 

"Them  rooms  is  wer'  Mr.  Grattan  stys.  'E's  a  bloomin* 
torf,  an'  no  mistike — I  don't  fink !" 

"Oh,  you  know  him,  do  you  ?"  said  Frank. 

"Don't  I,  jest !"  said  the  boy.  "I  wouldn't  be  wearin' 
these  'ere  blimy  boots  if  'e  'adn't  tossed  me  for  'alf-a- 
crahn  egin  a  trahser  button.  An'  strike  me  if  it  didn't 
come  down  'eads !" 

On  the  door  of  3O5A  Frank  found  the  name  Edmund 
Grattan,  and  gave  a  dab  at  the  iron  knocker.  The  door 
was  opened  by  the  Irishman  himself.  "Come  in,  my 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  173 

boy/'  he  said.  "Sure  and  it's  good  of  you  to  come. 
You're  just  in  time  to  see  the  prettiest  little  feet  in  Soho 
doing  a  real  Hungarian  jig." 

There  was  the  sound  of  a  fiddle  playing  a  staccato  tune; 
and  when  Frank  followed  the  Irishman  into  the  room  he 
saw  a  girl  in  a  scarlet  silk  frock,  with  red  silk  stockings 
and  shoes,  dancing  round  a  room  in  which  most  of  the 
furniture  had  been  piled  up  in  a  corner,  with  the  chairs 
on  a  deal  table.  She  was  a  dark,  gypsy-looking  girl  of 
about  sixteen,  with  laughing  black  eyes  and  a  pretty  oval 
face,  with  ripe  lips  and  white  teeth.  She  was  dancing  a 
wild,  half-savage  barcarolle  with  shrill  little  cries,  spring- 
ing into  the  air,  as  the  fiddle  rose  into  piercing  notes,  and 
then  dancing  backwards,  with  her  hands  thrust  out,  es- 
caping as  it  seemed  from  some  imaginary  pursuer.  Sud- 
denly, as  Frank  entered,  she  stopped,  laughing  and  pant- 
ing for  breath,  with  her  hands  on  her  hips ;  while  the  fid- 
dler, an  elderly  man  with  oily  black  hair  and  solemn  black 
eyes,  and  a  long,  lean,  melancholy  face,  wiped  a  bead 
of  sweat  off  his  forehead  and  rubbed  his  bow  on  a  piece 
of  rosin. 

"Bravo !  Bravo !"  said  Grattan,  patting  the  girl's  shoul- 
der. "If  you  are  not  earning  £10  a  week  on  the  music- 
halls  before  long  I  shall  be  very  disappointed  with  you." 

"Oh  dat  would  be  too  good !  Altogeder  too  good,"  cried 
the  girl,  clasping  her  hands  and  laughing  excitedly.  "My 
fader,  he  say  ze  English  people  do  not  understan'  ze 
poetry  of  ze  Hungarian  dance,  ze  passion,  ze — vat  you 
call? — romance  an'  drama!  Ten  pounds,  you  say!  Oh, 
my  good  God,  von  leetle  pound  a  veek  vould  make  me 
zo  'appy  as  a  king!" 

"I  'ave  been  too  long  vaiting  for  vat  you  call  ze  luck," 
said  the  elderly  man,  with  a  deep  sigh  that  was  half  a 
groan.  "Ze  heart  of  hope  do  not  jump  in  ze  hungry 
belly.  Zat  is  a  Hungarian  folk-word." 


174  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Ah,  luck !"  said  Grattan.  "That  is  the  magic  thing  of 
life.  It  comes  suddenly,  swiftly,  when  it  is  least  expected, 
just  at  the  very  nick  of  time,  and  then — hey  presto ! — the 
sad  heart  becomes  a  merry  one,  and  the  ragged  old  dress 
changes  into  a  gold-spangled  gown,  and  the  old  garret 
becomes  the  boudoir  of  a  princess.  My  friends,  do  not 
despair.  I  could  tell  you  many  stories  of  good  luck, 
from  the  time  when  the  Little  People  made  a  king  out  of 
a  cobbler  and  led  the  Beggar-Maid  to  the  Palace  of  a 
Prince." 

"Ah,  you  vill  always  tell  ze  fairy-tales !"  cried  the  gypsy 
girl.  Then,  when  her  father  spoke  to  her  in  a  strange 
language,  she  said,  "Yes,  I  come,  now,  at  vonce." 

She  went  over  to  the  Irishman  and  put  her  hands  on  his 
shoulders  and  kissed  him  on  both  cheeks. 

"God  bless  you,  little  Katarina,"  said  Grattan;  "say  a 
prayer  for  me  to  the  dear  Lady/' 

"But  yes,"  said  the  girl.  "I  burn  'arf  a  candle  for  you 
every  night.  'Dear  Lady/  I  say,  'be  kind  to  ze  good  friend 
of  my  fader  an'  me/  Oh  yes,  zat  is  quite  true." 

The  elderly  man  clasped  Grattan's  hand  with  his  bony 
fingers  and,  bending  down,  kissed  it  as  though  the  Irish- 
man were  a  king  or  a  saint.  Then  they  went  out  of  the 
room,  the  girl  looking  back  for  a  moment  to  blow  him 
a  kiss. 

"Nice  people,"  said  Grattan  when  they  had  gone. 
"Fancy  that  child  burning  candles  for  me  to  the  Ma- 
donna. I'll  bet  she  sometimes  goes  without  food  to  do 
that.  Her  fiddler  father  plays  in  the  orchestra  at  an 
East  End  music-hall  for  sixteen  shillings  a  week,  and  his 
room  here  costs  him  eight-and-six.  My  God !  There's 
a  lot  of  tragedy  in  the  world." 

Frank  had  been  rather  startled  by  the  little  scene  with 
those  "nice  people"  into  which  he  had  come  suddenly  out 
of  the  streets  of  London.  But  he  had  assured  himself 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  175 

now  that  he  would  not  be  surprised  if  a  hobgoblin  sud- 
denly appeared  out  of  the  cupboard,  or  if  an  Oriental 
wizard  suddenly  issued  lut  of  a  volume  of  smoke  from 
the  middle  of  the  carpet,  or  if  the  ragged  gentleman  who 
had  been  piping  to  the  children  of  the  court  poked  his 
head  through  the  door  and  offered  to  play  "Over  the 
Hills  and  Far  Away."  It  was  sufficiently  strange  to  find 
a  distinguished  war-correspondent  and  journalist  domi- 
ciled in  the  centre  of  a  Soho  slum,  applauding  the  strange, 
fantastic  dance  of  a  Hungarian  gypsy  girl,  and  allowing 
his  hand  to  be  kissed  by  an  oily  old  man  who  certainly 
had  not  used  soap  for  a  long  time. 

Grattan's  room  also  suggested  the  most  curious  possi- 
bilities. Over  the  doorway  hung  a  gorgeous  Oriental 
tapestry  with  a  Saracenic  design,  and  the  deal  boards  of 
the  floor  were  strewn  with  Persian  rugs.  On  the  mantel- 
piece, instead  of  a  clock,  was  a  bronze  Buddha  with  a 
solemn,  inscrutable  face,  with  some  broken  remnants  of 
Greek  figures  in  red  clay  on  either  side.  On  the  walls 
were  hung  pencil  and  charcoal  sketches  of  soldiers  in  the 
uniforms  of  many  nations,  and  caricatures  of  many 
strange  types  of  humanity.  In  a  recess  at  the  end  of  the 
room  was  a  garishly-coloured  statue  of  the  Madonna  and 
Child  in  gilt  crowns.  On  each  side  of  the  fire-place 
stood  a  mummy  case  propped  up  on  end.  A  pair  of  foils 
and  three  revolvers  made  a  trophy  on  the  opposite  wall ; 
and  here  and  there,  on  unpainted  deal  shelves,  were  curi- 
ously-carved tusks,  African  fetishes  and  charms,  and 
masks,  Japanese  bronzes,  a  Russian  ikon,  a  beautiful 
ivory  and  ebony  crucifix,  and  miscellaneous  objects,  like 
a  pair  of  tiny  gold-worked  slippers,  a  lock  of  a  woman's 
hair  in  an  oval  frame,  a  human  skull,  a  pair  of  handcuffs, 
and  Mexican  spurs  with  long  rowels.  In  such  a  room 
Frank  felt  himself  breathing  an  atmosphere  of  romantic 
and  adventurous  memories,  which,  however,  could  hardly 


176  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

be  reconciled  with  the  whimsical  face  of  the  Irishman 
who  sat  smoking  quietly  in  the  midst  of  these  relics. 

"Did  you  ever  see  such  a  den?"  said  Grattan,  who 
had  noticed  Frank's  roving  eyes.  "It's  a  queer  kind  of 
place  to  call  'home';  and  yet  I  think  of  it  as  my  'snug 
little  kingdom  up  four  pairs  of  stairs/  and  it  is  pleasant 
to  come  back  to  it  from  foreign  parts.  You  see  I  am  a 
bird  of  passage,  and  I  don't  need  much  accommodation. 
Besides,  I  have  many  friends  in  Newport  Buildings." 

He  spoke  with  the  greatest  affection  of  a  clown  who 
performed  twice  daily  at  the  Hippodrome,  and  who,  like 
most  of  his  class,  was  the  most  melancholy  and  miserable 
man  when  off  duty.  Nature  had  been  unkind  to  him  in 
giving  him  a  comical  face  with  a  turned-up  nose  and  a 
twisted  mouth.  But  for  those  accidents  of  nature  he 
might  have  been  a  serious  actor  in  melodrama,  which 
had  been  his  early  ambition.  But  his  heart  was  of  the 
right  shape,  and  he  would  give  private  performances  in 
the  court  below  to  the  children,  who  laughed  until  their 
sides  ached  at  his  droll  grimaces  and  the  high-pitched 
voice  in  which  he  made  the  best  jokes  in  the  world  and 
brought  a  whole  farmyard  into  Soho.  Another  of  Grat- 
tan's  friends  was  an  old  Russian  gentleman  living  in  the 
next  room  down  the  passage  who  was  the  greatest  genius 
in  the  science  of  explosives.  "I  assure  you,  my  boy," 
said  Grattan,  "that  if  you  ever  want  to  blow  up  a  news- 
paper office,  which  I  am  inclined  to  think  would  be  a 
great  service  to  Almighty  God,  old  Petrov  Petrovitch  will 
provide  you  with  a  bomb  small  enough  to  pop  into  your 
waistcoat  pocket  and  powerful  enough  to  do  an  admirable 
amount  of  damage.  He  is  a  most  charming  old  gentle- 
man with  a  great  fund  of  natural  benevolence." 

In  a  room  on  the  storey  below,  said  Grattan,  lived  an 
old  Italian  who  had  been  a  hero  in  his  time.  He  was  a 
giant  of  a  man,  though  now  a  physical  wreck,  in  a  tiny 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  177 

bed-sitting-room  which  he  seemed  to  fill  with  his  im- 
mense bulk  of  flesh.  Above  his  mantelpiece  were  col- 
oured pictures  of  Garibaldi  and  King  Humbert;  and  by 
the  side  of  them  hung  a  great  cavalry  sword,  which  in 
his  youth  this  veteran  of  Italy's  struggle  for  independ- 
ence had  flashed  in  many  a  furious  charge.  On  the  table 
were  the  medals  he  had  won,  which  he  showed  to  Grat- 
tan  one  day  with  trembling  pride,  and  in  an  album  he 
had  portraits  of  many  of  his  old  comrades.  As  he  looked 
at  their  faces,  and  remembered  that  most  of  them  were 
dead,  tears  had  fallen  from  the  old  man's  eyes  and 
splashed  heavily  on  to  the  page.  Then  he  had  turned 
to  another  portrait  of  a  blonde  young  giant  in  a  cavalry 
uniform,  and  Grattan  had  seen  by  a  sudden  dreaminess 
and  wistfulness  that  came  into  his  eyes  that  he  was  think- 
ing of  his  youth.  He  gave  a  great  sigh  that  was  some- 
thing like  a  sob,  and  his  old  wife  came  to  him,  and,  put- 
ting a  hand  on  his  shoulder,  said  something  in  her  soft 
Italian.  When  the  King  of  Italy  came  to  London,  Grattan 
put  the  huge  old  man  into  a  four-wheeled  cab  and  took 
him  to  join  the  Old  Guard  of  Garibaldian  veterans  at  the 
Italian  Embassy.  The  King  shook  hands  with  him,  and 
it  made  amends  for  a  long  exile. 

Grattan  told  other  stories  of  the  strange  lives  sur- 
rounding him  in  this  block  of  buildings  in  Soho.  There 
were  many  foreigners  among  them,  employed  in  con- 
nection with  the  theatres  round  Piccadilly  as  property- 
masters,  wardrobe  men  and  women,  limelighters,  stage- 
carpenters,  and  theatrical  dress  and  wig-makers.  No  one, 
said  Grattan,  who  sits  in  the  stalls,  or  the  gods  watching 
a  new  ballet  or  a  gorgeous  pantomime,  thinks  of  the  work 
that  goes  to  the  making  of  all  this  splendour.  But  in 
Poverty  Palace  (as  he  called  the  place)  from  early 
morning  until  late  in  the  night  there  are  women  sitting 
in  little  rooms,  stitching  at  those  flimsy,  shimmering 


178          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

garments  which  display  the  beauty  of  the  ballet  ladies, 
sewing  their  silken  slippers,  and  their  long,  slim  stockings, 
twisting  paper  flowers  into  wreaths,  and  bespangling  cos- 
tumes which  will  dazzle  the  eyes  of  the  groundlings. 
There  are  many  foreign  tailors  in  these  flats  of  three 
rooms,  which  may  be  rented  for  eleven  shillings  a  week; 
and  at  night,  said  Grattan,  one  may  see,  sometimes,  by  the 
light  of  a  dim  lamp  illuminating  a  black  window-pane 
the  shadow  of  an  arm  jerking  upwards  with  a  rhythmic 
gesture  as  one  of  them  works  overtime,  and  stitches, 
stitches,  stitches  with  dogged  industry. 

The  Irishman  told  Frank  of  other  strange  trades  and 
strange  people  in  the  neighbouring  rooms.  There  were 
men  of  letters  who  write  by  candle-light,  with  hot  hearts 
and  feverish  eyes,  and  wild,  disordered  hair.  They  are 
men  whose  names  and  pseudonyms  are  known  to  the 
secret  police  of  foreign  cities,  and  who  bear  on  their 
bodies  the  marks  of  prison  sufferings.  They  are  writing 
that  black  literature  which  preaches  a  wild  gospel  of 
liberty  and  blood,  and  is  smuggled  across  the  Continent  in 
leaflets  which  find  their  way  to  soldiers*  barracks  and 
sailors'  bunks,  and  night-clubs  where  men  come  in  un- 
lawful assembly  with  bloodshot  eyes  and  smouldering 
hearts. 

Grattan  told  Frank  of  old  men  who  lived  lonely  lives 
in  this  block  of  grim,  sunless  buildings.  They  are  kept 
alive  by  the  memory  of  triumphs  forgotten  by  all  except 
themselves,  of  good  days  which  are  now  yesterdays. 
One  of  them  sits  with  sightless  eyes,  thinking  always  of 
these  things.  He  remembers  when  laughter  surged  at 
him  from  full  houses;  when,  as  he  stood  alone  before 
the  footlights,  the  applause  thundered  at  him  when  his 
quick  brain  worked  out  a  new  gag  which  made  him  the 
darling  of  the  gods.  The  old  jokes  come  floating  through 
his  mind  as  he  gropes  back  into  the  past  with  blind 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  179 

eyes.  Then  he  listens  for  his  daughter.  She  is  late  to- 
night, perhaps,  and  the  kippers  are  growing  cold.  The 
world  would  not  call  her  a  good  woman,  but  she  is  kind 
to  her  old  father. 

"Frank,  my  boy,"  said  Grattan,  "there  are  many  poor 
devils  within  a  spit  of  you,  actors  of  old  renown  in  stock 
companies  where  'the  ghost  walked'  long  ago,  old  singers 
with  cracked  voices,  old  fiddlers  whose  fingers  are  stiff- 
jointed,  the  wreck  and  rubbish  of  humanity  kicked  into 
its  lumber-room  of  broken  things." 

He  sighed  mournfully,  and  for  a  while  was  silent. 
Then  he  raised  his  head  and  said  with  a  smile — 

"Listen !  How  the  children  are  laughing  and  squealing 
in  the  courtyard.  It  does  one  a  power  of  good  to  hear 
them." 

Once,  but  not  on  the  first  night  of  Frank's  visit  to 
his  rooms,  he  spoke  about  his  wife  as  though  she  were 
dead;  and  afterwards  Frank  noticed  how  he  used  to 
date  everything  from  the  time  of  her  going  away.  "It 
was  before  my  wife  had  gone — rest  her  soul,"  or  "That 
was  when  my  little  woman  was  with  me."  Late  one 
evening  when  Frank  was  alone  with  him,  he  raised  the 
glass  of  whisky  he  was  drinking  and  said,  "This  is  the 
poison  that  killed  the  love  of  the  best  v/oman  that  ever 
kissed  a  man." 

With  a  sudden  gesture  of  passion  he  threw  half  a 
tumblerful  of  whisky  on  to  the  fire.  It  quenched  the 
flames,  and  the  wet  embers  fizzled  and  smoked.  Such 
moods  were  rare  with  him,  and  generally  preceded  one 
of  those  periods  when  he  disappeared  for  a  week  from 
Fleet  Street  and  all  his  well-known  haunts,  and  when 
his  friends  whispered  that  "he  had  gone  to  find  his  wife." 
Then  he  would  come  back  chastened,  very  humble,  very 
eager  to  do  any  little  act  of  kindness  to  some  one  "down 
on  his  luck,"  or  some  gracious  little  thing  to  Margaret 


i8o  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Hubbard,  to  Katherine,  or  other  friends.  At  such  times, 
if  Frank  were  alone  with  him,  he  would  speak  of  his 
religion,  and  especially  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  for  whom 
he  seemed  to  have  a  kind  of  mystical  and  passionate  love, 
as  the  type  of  purest  and  infinitely  compassionate  woman- 
hood. 

"My  boy,"  he  said  to  Frank  once,  "the  reverence  of 
divine  womanhood  in  the  sacred  and  beautiful  figure  of 
Our  Lady  is  very  cleansing  to  the  filthy  hearts  of  men. 
The  thought  of  divine  motherhood  and  virgin  innocence 
drags  them  out  of  the  mire.  It  gives  them  a  bright  vision, 
to  which  they  grope  their  way  through  the  darkness  of 
their  own  sinfulness.  That  is  why  the  Irish  people  never 
indulge  in  the  black,  unnatural  vices  of  humanity.  God 
knows  many  of  them  are  weak,  like  myself,  many  of  them 
are  brutal,  but  the  memory  of  the  'Hail  Mary'  taught  to 
them  in  the  old  cabin  and  the  little  church  comes  singing 
into  their  ears  when  the  devil  lures  them  to  his  blackest 
pits.  And  even  if  they  descend  to  the  lowest  depths  the  • 
face  of  the  Madonna  looks  down  at  them ;  and,  with  one 
'Ave  Maria'  shouted  from  a  tortured  heart,  they  leap  out  ; 
of  the  clutches  of  the  foul  fiend  and  stretch  out  their 
hands  to  the  Mother  of  Mercy/' 

Frank  was  deeply  absorbed  in  the  study  of  this  extraor- 
dinary man's  character,  and  especially  by  these  revela- 
tions of  his  faith.  Frank  himself  would  not  have  labelled 
himself  a  "freethinker."  He  belonged  to  a  generation  1 
in  which  that  label  had  lost  its  novelty  and  glamour ;  to  a 
period  in  which  none  of  the  old  labels  of  religious  agnos- 
ticism or  scepticism  excite  any  passionate  emotions  in  the 
minds  of  young  men.  He  was  not  an  agnostic  or  a  ma-  I 
terialist,  or  a  pessimist,  or  even  a  follower  of  Nietzsche, 
or  Karl  Marx,  or  Bernard  Shaw.  All  these  are  fashions 
of  thought  which  had  an  influence  yesterday,  but. are  to- 
day as  old-fashioned  as  Arianism  or  Calvinism.  Frank 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  181 

Luttrell  simply  "didn't  bother."  Having  gone  through 
all  the  stages  of  doubt  and  disbelief,  he  had  decided,  not 
deliberately  or  consciously,  to  adopt  an  attitude  of  re- 
ligious inactivity,  as  though  waiting  for  some  other  philos- 
ophy to  come  along,  which,  no  doubt,  would  have  its 
day  like  others  and  then  die. 

At  this  time  .of  his  life  he  did  not  feel  the  need  of  any 
religious  stimulus  or  consolation.  Religion,  for  a  time, 
was  outside  the  scope  of  his  inquiry.  He  was  a  journalist 
investigating  the  facts  of  humanity.  As  yet  he  had  no 
business  with  the  laws  governing  those  facts,  with  the 
spiritual  force  behind  them.  Vicary,  the  news-editor, 
had  not  asked  him  for  reports  on  those  subjects.  That, 
perhaps,  is  how  Frank  would  have  explained  his  own  po- 
sition if  he  had  been  questioned.  And  there  would  have 
been  sincerity  as  well  as  irony  in  his  answer.  But, 
though  he  did  not  "bother"  about  religion  at  this  time, 
the  spiritual  side  of  his  nature  was  not  dormant.  On 
the  contrary,  his  spirituality  was  intensified  and  sensi- 
tised. His  spirit  was,  to  use  a  clumsy  metaphor,  like 
a  camera  exposing  an  immense  number  of  photographic 
plates  on  which  the  light  of  life  was  imprinting  instan- 
taneous but  enduring  impressions.  His  soul,  to  use  an- 
other clumsy  metaphor,  was  like  a  stringed  instrument 
made  and  tuned  by  loving  hands  in  which  there  are  all 
the  possibilities  of  infinite  melodies  and  discords,  and 
now  was  being  played  upon  by  thousands  of  invisible 
fingers,  which  struck  thrilling  chords,  and  jangled  notes, 
and  music  that  was  sometimes  very  gay  and  sometimes 
very  sad,  and  sometimes  weird  and  fantastic.  What  he 
needed  was  some  guiding  hand  of  a  master-musician  who 
would  arrange  all  those  stray  chords  and  disconnected 
notes  into  order  and  rhythm  and  symphony. 

Like  many  men  who  have  been  brought  up  in  old- 
fashioned  homes,  he  had  all  the  traditions  and  promptings 


182          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

of  a  religious  nature  without  a  definite  religious  belief. 
He  was  on  the  side  of  the  angels,  though  not  among 
them.  He  hated  cruelty  and  vice,  and  lies  and  treachery. 
He  had  an  instinctive  love  of  kindness,  sympathy,  cleanli- 
ness of  heart,  and  truthfulness.  He  shrank  from  the 
sight  of  human  suffering,  and  was  thrilled  by  the  courage 
of  those  who  suffer.  But  he  was  without  the  spirit  of 
the  reformer.  He  had  no  determined  ambition  to  make 
the  world  better.  He  merely  watched  and  explored,  and 
tried  to  understand,  and  was  intensely  interested  in  hu- 
man hearts.  Only  occasionally  was  he  startled  and  per- 
plexed by  deeper  feelings. 

Once  when  he  walked  down  the  Embankment  late  one 
night  he  stopped  and  stared  at  the  river,  moving  by  like 
a  flood  of  printers'  ink,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  on  its  way  to 
Fleet  Street.  And  then  suddenly  he  turned  and  looked 
up  one  of  the  avenues  to  the  lights  in  that  street  beyond, 
and  some  overwhelming  emotion  flooded  his  spirits.  He 
could  not  tell  what  was  the  meaning  of  it ;  he  only  knew 
that  his  heart  was  beating  in  a  jerky  way,  that  a  kind  of 
cold  wave  pressed  from  the  back  of  his  head  down  his 
spine,  and  that  then  he  seemed  to  have  got  outside  his  own 
body.  "My  God !"  he  said.  "All  those  people— all  those 
buildings.  What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all — this  swarming 
life,  these  endless  births  and  deaths  ?"  He  was  not  mor- 
alising deliberately,  as  young  men  do  who  have  read  a 
little  poetry  and  a  little  philosophy.  It  seemed  as  if 
some  voice  had  put  the  question  to  him.  He  was  dimly 
conscious  that  for  a  moment  he  had  stood  on  the  edge  of 
the  supernatural,  and  he  was  afraid  of  himself.  Then 
he  got  back  into  his  body,  and  walked  on  to  Northumber- 
land Avenue,  where  he  read  the  advertisements  outside 
the  Playhouse,  smiling  at  the  photograph  of  a  nautical 
play,  in  a  normal  state  of  mind  again. 

Perhaps  his  senses  were  over-sensitive  and  affected  his 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  183 

spirit.  The  smell  of  hay  in  a  mews  behind  St.  James's 
Street  made  him  stand  one  day  for  a  minute  or  two  in  a 
kind  of  dream,  in  which  he  saw  himself  as  a  boy  lying 
on  the  mown  grass  drying  in  the  sun  in  the  glebe-field  at 
home,  listening  to  the  hum  of  insect  life,  watching  his 
mother  reading  in  a  camp-chair,  and  thinking  how  beauti- 
ful she  was  in  her  lilac  sun-bonnet. 

And  once  when  he  was  waiting  for  a  fat  old  duchess  to 
open  an  exhibition  of  "Infant  Health,"  standing  among  a 
group  of  over-dressed  women,  he  suddenly  forgot  his  en- 
vironment and  went  climbing  to  the  hill-top  outside  the 
village  at  home,  where  as  a  boy  he  used  to  watch  the  sun- 
set change  into  a  thousand  colour-harmonies,  until  all 
the  sky  was  quivering  with  reflected  light.  He  was 
awakened  by  the  sound  of  "God  Save  the  King,"  played 
on  a  cottage  piano  in  another  room,  and  by  the  royal 
duchess  saying  in  German  gutturals,  "I  haf  moch  pleaz- 
har  in  deglaring  this  egzhibition  open."  He  wondered 
afterwards  what  had  given  him  this  day-dream ;  and  then 
he  remembered  that  one  of  the  women  near  him  had  been 
wearing  violets.  The  scent  had  taken  him  to  the  shady 
lane  where  as  a  boy  he  had  picked  violets  for  his  mother ; 
and  when  once  his  imagination  had  been  taken  back  to  the 
winding  path,  his  spirit  went  walking  further,  to  the  hill- 
top beyond.  This  sensitiveness,  natural  and  spiritual, 
made  him  vividly  impressed  by  the  strange  personality  of 
Edmund  Grattan.  For  Grattan  appealed  both  to  his  nat- 
ural and  spiritual  sensibility.  He  had  a  voice  which  had 
a  rather  melancholy  timbre,  and  when  he  was  deeply 
moved  it  became  deeper  in  tone,  with  the  musical  inflec- 
tions of  the  Irish  way  of  speech.  When  he  spoke  of  his 
faith,  or  when  he  was  telling  a  fairy-story,  his  eyes 
glowed  with  a  luminous  and  rather  haunting  fire.  Frank 
was  often  startled  by  the  extraordinary  paradoxes  of 
the  man's  character  and  by  the  strange,  romantic  and 


184          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

secret  tragedy  of  his  life,  but  what  most  impressed  him 
was  this  devotion  to  the  Virgin  Mother  in  a  man  who  for 
the  greater  part  of  his  life  had  wandered  among  the  Bo- 
hemians, the  adventurers,  the  heretics,  the  anarchists,  the 
infidels,  and  the  outcasts  of  the  modern  world. 

It  was  Grattan  who  put  up  Frank  Luttrell  as  a  member 
of  the  Journalist  Club.  He  was  seconded  by  Brandon, 
and  elected  without  opposition.  Grattan  had  said  to 
him,  "My  boy,  you  wrill  never  be  a  journalist  until  you 
belong  to  the  Club,"  and  Frank,  who  thought  himself  a 
journalist  already,  only  understood  what  Grattan  had 
meant  when  he  had  been  a  member  for  some  weeks. 

The  place  itself  was  not  inviting.  Its  entrance  was  up 
a  narrow  court  of  Fleet  Street;  and  on  the  doorway  was 
a  notice  in  big  black  letters  saying  that  no  strangers 
would  be  admitted  until  their  names  had  been  "sent  in"  to 
the  member  they  wanted  to  see.  A  glass  window  to  the 
right  of  the  door  gave  vocal  access  to  the  inquiry  office, 
which  was  also  the  bar.  When  the  window  opened  to 
Luttrell,  who  inquired  for  Grattan,  his  nostrils  were  as- 
sailed by  the  smell  of  stale  tobacco  and  the  fumes  of 
whisky  and  wine,  and  he  heard  the  clink  of  glasses,  a 
burst  of  loud  laughter,  and  one  voice  shouting  out — 

"And  the  end  of  the  story  wa* " 

Luttrell  did  not  hear  the  end  of  the  story,  for,  after 
mentioning  his  own  and  Grattan's  name,  the  man  at  the 
window,  who  was  uncorking  a  bottle  of  port,  shut  down 
the  glass  with  a  bang. 

Grattan  came  to  fetch  him  in,  and  Frank  found  him- 
self in  a  long  room,  divided  at  one  enc  by  the  bar  which 
he  had  seen  through  the  window.  Against  the  bar  were 
leaning  four  or  five  men,  among  whom  were  the  little 
sporting  editor  Birkenshaw,  whom  he  had  met  at  Mar- 
garet Hubbard's  flat  one  night,  and  Christopher  Codring- 
ton,  looking  rather  pale,  and  enormously  tall  by  the  side 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  185 

of  his  companion.  There  were  about  twenty  other  men 
in  the  room,  deep  in  easy-chairs,  smoking,  drinking  every 
variety  of  liquid,  hot  and  cold,  and  carrying  on  a  cross- 
fire of  conversation. 

Several  of  the  men  looked  up  as  Grattan  entered  with 
Luttrell  and  called  out  to  him. 

"Hullo,  Teddy,  what's  yours,  old  man?" 

"Nothing  at  all,  at  all,"  said  Grattan,  with  a  richer 
brogue  than  he  usually  affected. 

He  directed  Frank's  attention  to  a  collection  of  col- 
oured caricatures  which  ran  the  whole  length  of  the 
room.  They  were  mad  dreams  of  human  faces  and  fig-* 
ures,  monstrously  ludicrous  and  amazingly  clever. 

"Great  Scott!"  said  Frank  with  a  gasp.  "That's  you, 
isn't  it?" 

"I  should  rather  say  it  was,"  said  Grattan,  as  though 
he  were  proud  of  this  distorted  likeness.  "It's  not  only 
a  portrait  of  my  outward  characteristics,  it  is  a  most 
damnable  and  realistic  study  of  my  ridiculous  brain." 

Luttrell  recognised  other  men  on  the  staff  of  his  own 
paper,  Brandon,  Quin,  Vicary,  and  others,  each  carica- 
ture giving  him  a  kind  of  shock — it  was  so  unmistakably 
like  the  original,  yet  so  wildly  and  hideously  distorted. 

"The  man  who  does  these,"  he  said,  "is  either  a  mad- 
man or  a  genius/' 

"Both,"  said  Grattan,  "but  one  of  the  best." 

Luttrell  will  not  soon  forget  his  first  evening  at  the 
Club.  Grattan  introduced  him  to  two  or  three  of  the 
men,  ordered  a  whisky-and-soda  for  him,  and  then  went 
over  to  the  bar  where  he  stood  smoking  a  pipe  with  three 
or  four  other  men  who  patted  him  on  the  back  and 
seemed  to  make  a  hero  of  him.  Frank  was  again  a  spec- 
tator and  a  listener.  It  would  seem  to  be  the  part  he 
had  to  play  in  life. 

A  slim,  boyish  fellow  in  a  frock-coat,  very  creased 


186          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

about  the  tails,  and  trousers  baggy  at  the  knees,  was 
standing  with  his  back  to  the  fire  telling  with  a  perfectly 
grave  face  an  obviously  impossible  story  of  how  he  was 
wrecked  in  a  small  yacht  on  the  Goodwin  Sands.  He 
piled  absurdity  on  absurdity,  until  at  last  his  imagination 
took  free  rein  as  he  described  how  he  chased  the  boat 
for  hours  as  it  drifted  round  the  sandbanks,  always  a 
few  yards  ahead  of  him  as  he  waded  knee-deep  in  water. 
His  nautical  expressions  caused  shouts  of  laughter;  and 
he  was  prompted  in  certain  episodes  of  the  adventure 
when  his  fancy  halted  for  a  moment. 

"Well  done,  Bunny/'  said  one  of  the  men,  wiping 
tears  out  of  his  eyes,  when  the  story  was  finished.  "As 
an  honest  lie  that's  the  best  story  I've  heard  for  a  long 
time.  What  are  you  drinking  ?" 

Another  nautical  story  succeeded  from  a  man  who 
looked  the  real  thing,  with  a  big,  brown,  seafaring  face. 
He  described  how,  when  he  was  the  skipper  of  a  tramp 
steamer  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa,  he  received  a  cable 
from  the  owner  to  bring  home  102  monkeys,  with  his 
cargo  of  rubber  and  palm  oil.  The  order  seemed  eccen- 
tric; but  he  took  his  crew  for  a  monkey-hunt,  and  after 
the  most  perilous  and  exciting  adventures,  captured  the 
required  number  of  beasts.  They  were  brought  on  board 
and  put  into  temporary  cages  made  by  the  ship's  carpen- 
ter. All  went  well  for  a  week;  and  the  monkeys,  with 
their  heads  through  the  wooden  bars  of  their  hutches  on 
deck,  watched  the  sailormen  at  work  with  obvious  inter- 
est. Then  a  tragedy  happened.  The  monkeys  broke  out 
early  one  morning  and  ran  amok  on  deck.  One  great 
beast  seized  a  marline-spike  and  chased  the  chief  mate 
up  the  rigging.  Three  others  took  possession  of  the 
bridge,  from  which  the  skipper  himself  had  fled.  The 
other  sailors  had  gone  below  hatches,  and  had  battened 
themselves  down.  After  terrible  experiences,  the  vessel 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  187 

came  by  God's  grace  into  the  mouth  of  the  Thames,  where 
she  was  hailed  by  the  Port  Sanitary  authorities,  who  were 
surprised  to  see  a  crew  of  the  ugliest  old  scoundrels  in- 
dulging in  wild  orgies  on  deck.  Evidently  there  was  a 
mutiny  on  board.  The  skipper  put  his  head  out  of  a 
porthole  and  explained  the  painful  situation ;  and,  after  a 
desperate  fight,  the  monkeys  were  overpowered  and  the 
vessel  towed  to  Blackwall  Dock. 

"Then,"  said  the  story-teller,  "I  went  to  see  my  own- 
ers; and  I  need  not  describe  in  detail  the  flowers  of 
speech  which  fell  from  my  lips.  I  have  never  done  my- 
self so  much  justice.  In  the  end,  however,  the  owners 
explained  that  an  error  must  have  crept  into  the  cable 
which  had  caused  all  the  trouble.  Instead  of  102  mon- 
keys, they  had  merely  asked  for  one  or  two.  They  pre- 
pared to  take  proceedings  against  the  postal  authorities, 
and  in  the  meantime  they  relieved  me  of  my  berth. 
That,  gentlemen,,  is  why  I  became  a  journalist." 

This  story,  told  in  real  seafaring  speech,  was  received 
with  yells  of  laughter.  But  a  momentary  silence  fol- 
lowed when  a  newcomer  entered  the  club.  It  was  a 
good-looking  fellow  of  about  thirty  with  a  pale,  clean- 
shaven face. 

"Well,  old  boy,"  said  one  of  the  men,  "how  goes  it?" 

"Oh,  fine !"  said  the  man,  with  a  kind  of  forced  cheer- 
fulness. "Stand  me  a  drink,  some  one." 

Half-a-dozen  of  the  men  called  for  the  drink,  and  room 
was  made  for  the  unlucky  one.  Luttrell  learnt  after- 
wards from  Grattan  that  the  man  had  been  dismissed  at 
a  moment's  notice  by  a  new  editor  of  his  paper  who  was 
cutting  down  expenses.  He  had  been  married  a  year 
ago,  and  his  wife  had  just  given  birth  to  a  child.  "What 
the  poor  beggar  will  do,  I  don't  know,"  said  Grattan. 
"It's  not  easy  to  get  another  job.  The  tragedy  of  it  is 
that  he  hasn't  had  the  pluck  to  tell  his  wife  in  her  delicate 


188          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

condition,  and  stays  out  all  day  long,  pretending  he's  at 
the  office  as  usual." 

Luttrell  listened  to  the  conversation  of  the  men  round 
him.  One  stout,  youngish  man  with  a  Shakespearean 
forehead  above  a  Cupid  face  which  seemed  to  be  oozing 
with  the  most  genial  good-nature  was  criticising  contem- 
porary literature  and  drama  with  laughing  satire.  He 
denounced  Bernard  Shaw  as  an  arch-charlatan.  "The 
fellow  has  never  put  up  a  single  original  idea.  He  has 
cribbed  everything  from  Ibsen  and  Nietzsche." 

Another  man  also  of  stout  build,  with  a  rather  swollen 
face  and  fresh  complexion  reminding  one  curiously  of  a 
school-boy  with  the  mumps,  was  discussing  certain  politi- 
cal personalities  with  almost  brutal  cynicism.  Judging 
from  his  stories  they  were  all  liars,  mostly  knaves,  and 
hypocrites  of  the  deepest  dye. 

A  good-looking  young  Jew,  with  piercing  eyes  and  an 
actor's  mobile  lips,  was  dissecting  the  souls  of  society 
women  with  a  clever  cruelty  which  made  Luttrell  shiver. 

A  tall,  swarthy  young  man  with  fuzzy  black  hair,  upon 
which  rested  a  tall  hat  of  an  oily  brilliance,  was  describ- 
ing the  bribery  and  corruption  which  he  had  seen  at  a 
recent  bye-election.  "If  I  had  told  the  truth  about  it  in 
the  Rag  there  would  have  been  the  devil  to  pay,"  he  said. 

"Why  didn't  you  ?"  asked  one  of  the  men. 

The  fuzzy-haired  gentlemen  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Do  we  ever  tell  the  truth  ?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  said  the  other  man,  "and  that  is  why  the  Press 
has  lost  all  its  power.  One  of  these  days  some  one  will 
come  into  Fleet  Street  with  the  pluck  to  tell  the  truth. 
Then  he  will  smash  creation,  and  every  other  newspaper 
dragging  out  a  miserable  life,  bolstered  up  by  party 
friends,  and  keeping  itself  out  of  bankruptcy  by  swin- 
dling advertisements." 

"How  about  the  laws  of  libel  ?    How  the  devil  can  we 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  189 

afford  to  tell  the  truth  when  any  scoundrel  can  claim 
heavy  damages — and  get  'em  nine  times  out  of  ten  ?  The 
whole  machinery  of  the  law  is  to  prevent  truth  being 
told." 

"Oh  rats!  It's  because  editors  have  all  got  the  blue 
funk.  What  we  want  is  another  William  Cobbett,  who 
hammered  at  the  truth  with  a  good  square  fist,  and  was 
not  afraid  to  go  to  prison  in  an  honest  cause." 

"Oh,  that  sort  of  thing  don't  pay  nowadays.  We're 
all  after  circulation  and  ads.,  and  damn  sincerity.  After 
all,  what's  the  good  of  taking  ourselves  seriously?  No- 
body else  does." 

In  all  this  conversation  there  was  not  one  word  of  op- 
timism, of  idealism,  or  enthusiasm.  These  men,  young 
and  old,  seemed  to  have  lost  all  illusions,  and  a  knowledge 
of  life  had  made  them  blase  and  utterly  cynical. 

But  the  conversation  of  these  men  was  impressive  to 
one  who  came  from  another  world,  who  was  one  of  them 
• — yet  almost  a  stranger  among  them.  Each  spoke  always 
with  knowledge.  They  had  all  come  closely  and  con- 
stantly in  touch  with  interesting  people  and  interesting 
things.  Some  of  them  were  coarse  in  their  speech,  some 
were  of  the  smart  cockney  type,  one  or  two  had  obviously 
picked  up  what  education  they  had  in  the  streets  and  not 
in  the  schools.  But  even  the  youngest  among  them — 
boys  who,  as  Frank  knew  from  his  own  experience,  could 
not  be  earning  more  than  £3  or  £4  a  week — spoke  with 
the  understanding  and  the  quick  mother- wit  of  men  who 
have  seen  most  of  the  world's  peep-shows  and  measured 
up  its  puppets  and  pomposities.  They  were  all  critics, 
untouched  by  hero-worship  and  lacking  all  instincts  of 
reverence. 

One  thing  was  curious  in  this  club.  It  had  a  shifting 
population.  Few  men  kept  their  seats  for  more  than 
half-an-hour.  Men  were  always  going  out,  and  others 


190          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

always  coming  in.  A  man  would  rise,  stretch  his  arms 
and  say,  "Well,  I  must  go  and  do  a  bit  of  work."  An- 
other would  run  through  a  time-table  and  say,  "I  can  get 
to  Paddington  in  twenty-five  minutes  with  a  little  luck." 
Each  man  seemed  to  have  a  curiosity  in  the  other  man's 
business.  "Are  you  on  that  Chelmsford  story?  ...  By 
gad,  so  am  I!  We  may  as  well  go  together,  old  buck." 
"What  are  you  doing  down  there?  Oh,  all  right,  if 
you've  got  a  scoop  on,  keep  it  to  yourself,  my  lad.  I 
don't  go  in  for  scoops  at  my  time  of  life.  They  use  up 
a  lot  of  energy,  and  one  generally  gets  left." 

At  a  few  minutes  after  midnight  quite  a  new  crowd 
of  men  came  in,  and  stood  round  the  bar  drinking  and 
talking.  They  belonged  to  a  different  type  of  humanity 
from  those  who  had  taken  possession  of  the  club  chairs 
earlier  in  the  evening.  There  were  not  so  many  young 
men  among  them,  and  they  were  not  so  smartly  dressed. 
They  had  not  the  same  vivacity  and  restlessness.  Their 
eyes  were  tired,  and  most  of  them  spoke  the  Scottish 
language. 

"Who  are  those  fellows  ?"  said  Frank  to  Grattan,  who 
was  now  sipping  whisky  at  his  side  and  telling  endless 
tales  of  adventures.  Frank  also  was  drinking  whisky, 
which  unloosened  his  tongue  and  made  him  laugh  hilar- 
iously at  Grattan's  stories.  Six  empty  glasses  stood  on 
the  table  before  him. 

"Those,  my  boy,"  said  Grattan,  "belong  to  that  un- 
happy race  of  men  who  call  themselves  'Subs.'  They 
have  amazing  dexterity  with  blue  pencils,  and  they  are 
the  sworn  foes  of  descriptive  writers.  Their  whole  ob- 
ject in  life  is  to  cut  down.  They  are  the  butchers  of  jour- 
nalism. Never  creating  anything,  their  imaginations 
have  been  stunted,  and  their  souls  have  shrunk  to  the 
size  of  sixpenny-bits.  Most  of  them  live  at  Brixton, 
where  they  keep  wives  and  babies.  All  of  them  have 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  191 

lost  ambition,  hope,  and  youthfulness.  They  are  more 
to  be  pitied  than  the  convicts  of  Portland." 

"They  seem  pretty  cheerful  now,"  said  Frank. 

Grattan  stared  across  at  them  with  eyes  in  which 
there  was  an  alcoholic  fire. 

"Their  laughter  is  mirthless,"  he  said.  "It  comes  from 
empty  hearts." 

He  gripped  Frank's  knee. 

"Luttrell,"  he  said  almost  fiercely,  "never  be  drawn 
into  a  sub-editor's  room.  Avoid  it  as  you  would  the  pit 
of  hell.  Rather  starve,  rather  die  with  cold  under  Black- 
friars  Bridge  than  become  a  slave  and  a  sub.  Better 
the  body  perish  than  the  immortal  soul." 

The  men  whom  he  had  been  commiserating  were  going 
out.  They  had  only  stayed  ten  minutes  or  so,  and  in 
that  time  some  of  them  had  consumed  a  remarkable  quan- 
tity of  whisky. 

"Ah  weel,"  said  one  of  them,  "the  last  tram  waits  for 
no  mon.  Gude  nicht  to  ye  all." 

The  club  was  now  really  empty.  Only  three  men  sat 
round  the  fire-place,  where  Grattan  was  still  talking  and 
sipping  whisky,  and  where  Frank,  no  longer  listening  to 
Grattan,  was  talking  also,  and  describing  in  an  eloquence 
that  surprised  himself  the  effect  of  moonlight  on  the 
river  at  Westminster  Bridge.  No  one  was  paying  the 
slightest  attention  to  him,  but  he  was  pleased  with  the 
sound  of  his  own  words,  and  became  emotional  at  the 
thought  of  his  imagination  being  wasted  in  journalism, 
so  emotional  that  tears  welled  into  his  eyes,  and  were 
only  checked  when  he  laughed  hilariously  at  Grattan, 
who  had  overturned  his  glass  of  whisky.  The  man  at 
the  bar,  in  a  crumpled  evening  suit,  much  grease-stained, 
was  nodding  over  a  pink  paper.  The  sight  of  him  made 
Frank  sleepy,  and  he,  too,  nodded  with  his  chin  on  his 


192  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

chest,  waking  up  with  a  jerk  when  Grattan  rose  and 
steadied  himself  by  gripping  Frank's  shoulder. 

"Time  to  go/'  he  said.  "What  d'ye  mean  by  keeping 
me  up  so  late,  ye  young  devil?" 

Frank  got  up,  wondering  why  the  room  was  moving 
round  so  curiously,  and  why  there  were  two  men  at  the 
bar  in  crumpled  evening  suits  with  pink  papers. 

"Time  to  go  ?"  he  said  in  a  dazed  way.  "What  d'you 
want  to  go  for?  Just  beginning  to  enjoy  myself." 

Grattan  smacked  him  on  the  back. 

"Dissolute  young  scoundrel,"  he  said,  "leading  your 
old  uncle  into  temptation." 

Frank  was  groping  his  way  along  the  hat-rack,  which 
was  now  almost  empty. 

"Funny  thing!"  he  said  to  himself.  "Where've  all  the 
hats  gone  to?" 

After  several  efforts  he  found  his  own  and  put  it  on  his 
head  without  noticing  that  it  was  the  wrong  way  round. 

He  followed  Grattan  out  of  the  club,  and  arm-in-arm 
they  went  into  Fleet  Street. 

Grattan  stood  looking  up  and  down  the  street,  which 
was  now  quiet  and  almost  deserted.  But  on  the  other 
side  of  the  road  a  scarecrow  in  fluttering  rags  padded 
swiftly  along  noiselessly,  as  though  afraid  of  a  black 
shadow  in  a  pool  of  light,  where  a  policeman  stood  under 
a  lamp-post. 

"Fleet  Street !"  said  Grattan.  "The  Street  of  Adven- 
ture! What  a  legion  of  lost  souls  have  passed  this 
way !"  He  took  off  his  hat,  and  staring  in  a  melancholy 
way  up  and  down,  said  in  a  low  voice,  "Old  comrades, 
where  are  ye  all  ?"  He  muttered  one  or  two  names  and 
then  said,  "May  the  souls  of  the  faithful  departed, 
through  the  mercy  of  God,  rest  in  peace."  Then  he 
crossed  himself,  and  said,  "Good-bye,  old  fellow.  God 
bless  you." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  193 

Frank  wiped  some  cold  sweat  off  his  forehead. 

"Grattan,"  he  said  solemnly,  "you're  the  victim  of  su- 
perstition." 

He  found  the  last  word  difficult  to  say.  He  repeated 
it  several  times  unsuccessfully,  and  then  he  found  that 
Grattan  had  left  him.  For  a  moment  he  wanted  to  sit 
down  on  the  curbstone  and  to  burst  into  tears.  It  was 
unkind  of  Grattan  to  go  off  like  that,  very  unkind.  How 
was  he  going  to  get  home  alone  ?  Somebody  had  turned 
Fleet  Street  into  a  switchback.  Funny  thing,  he  had  no 
sooner  climbed  up  hill  than  he  plunged  down  into  a  val- 
ley again.  It  made  his  head  ache  horribly.  It  made  him 
feel  sea-sick.  Then  some  idea  seemed  to  break  its  way 
through  the  fog  in  his  head. 

"I  am  drunk,"  he  said.  "That's  what  it  is.  I'm 
drunk." 

He  kept  repeating  the  words  to  himself  in  an  idiotic, 
helpless  way.  He  leant  up  against  a  doorway,  and  it 
seemed  to  him  that  he  would  have  to  stay  there  until  he 
died. 

Then  a  tall  figure  stood  in  front  of  him. 

It  was  Christopher  Codrington. 

"Hulloh,  Luttrell,"  said  the  tall  figure,  which  to  Frank 
seemed  as  high  as  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's.  "What's  the 
matter  with  you?  You  look  frightfully  ill,  man." 

"I'm  drunk,"  said  Frank.     "I  tell  vou  I'm  drunk." 

Codrington  gave  a  low  laugh. 

"You  surprise  me,"  he  said  in  his  polite  way.  "I  al- 
ways thought  you  were  above  temptation." 

"I'm  drunk,"  said  Frank.  Then  he  became  very  angry. 
He  did  not  like  those  pale  eyes  staring  at  him. 

"Take  your  eyes  off  me,"  he  said.  "You  know  youVe 
bewitched  Katherine  with  them.  Poor  little  Kitty! 
Why,  I  would  give  my  soul  to  save  her  from  you." 


194  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Codrington  laughed  again,  but  there  was  a  note  of 
anger  in  the  sound. 

"My  dear  fool,  don't  talk  sky-bosh.     Go  home." 

"I  say  you  are  trying  to  ruin  Miss  Katherine  Hal- 
stead,"  said  Frank  fiercely.  "You're  a  blackguard,  a  low, 
dirty  blackguard.  Why  can't  you  leave  the  poor  girl 
alone?" 

"If  you  mention  that  lady's  name  again,"  said  Cod- 
rington, "I  shall  have  the  painful  duty  of  knocking  you 
down." 

"Do  you  think  she  doesn't  see  through  your  mask?" 
said  Frank.  "Katherine  is  not  to  be  deceived  by  those 
cold,  smiling  eyes " 

Codrington's  arm  went  out  from  the  shoulder  and 
Frank  fell  down  like  a  log. 

"My  God !"  said  Codrington. 

He  bent  down  over  the  fallen  boy,  who  lay  quite  still. 

A  black  shadow  crossed  the  road.     It  was  a  policeman. 

"What's  this?"  he  said. 

"It's  all  right,  officer,"  said  Codrington.  "This  gen- 
tleman has  got  too  much  whisky  inside  him.  Any  chance 
of  a  cab?" 

The  policeman  looked  up  and  down  Fleet  Street. 

"There's  one  coming  along  now,"  he  said.  "It's  a  bit 
of  luck  for  your  friend.  He  looks  bad,  don't  he  ?" 

Codrington  put  his  arm  under  Luttrell's  head,  grasped 
his  coat  and  hauled  him  up. 

"Luttrell,"  he  said,  "pull  yourself  together,  man." 

Frank  groaned.     "Oh,  my  God !"  he  said  feebly. 

The  policeman  and  Codrington  managed  to  get  him 
inside  the  cab,  and  Codrington  mounted  the  step  and  told 
the  driver  to  get  to  Staple  Inn.  Then  he  sat  by  Frank's 
side  and  said,  "I'm  sorry,  Luttrell.  I  ought  not  to  have 
hit  you.  But  you  deserved  it,  you  know." 

That  night  Frank  went  to  bed  with  his  clothes  on. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  195 

When  the  morning  light  crept  through  his  window-blinds 
after  a  night  of  agony  his  face  was  white  and  haggard. 
He  got  up  and  made  a  cup  of  tea  on  a  small  spirit  stove 
and  gulped  down  the  hot  liquid.  He  was  shivering  in 
every  limb,  and  his  head  was  still  throbbing.  But  he 
was  now  quite  sober,  and  more  miserable  than  he  had 
ever  been  in  his  life  before. 

Once  before  he  had  been  drunk.  It  was  up  at  Oxford 
when  he  had  got  into  trouble  on  bonfire  night.  But  then 
he  had  been  only  hilarious,  intoxicated  more  by  the  wine 
of  youth  and  by  the  wild  excitement  of  leading  a  college 
riot.  Last  night  had  been  redeemed  by  no  such  frolic. 
He  had  just  sat  and  soaked  whisky  while  he  was  listening 
to  Grattan's  stories.  He  had  made  a  beast  of  himself, 
and  that  last  scene  in  Fleet  Street  when  he  had  abused 
Codrington  and  had  measured  his  own  length  on  the 
pavement  was  utterly  degrading  and  loathesome.  What 
would  his  father  and  mother  have  thought  if  they  could 
have  seen  him  lying  in  the  mud,  which  still  stained  his 
clothes?  What  would  Katherine  and  Mother  Hubbard 
say  if  they  heard  of  that  sordid  adventure?  Perhaps 
Codrington  would  tell  them.  At  the  thought  Luttrell's 
face  flushed  scarlet,  and  he  groaned  aloud.  Good  God! 
Supposing  Codrington  told  them!  Then  he  reproached 
himself  for  thinking  so  meanly  of  the  man.  He  had  been 
kind  last  night.  He  had  behaved  like  a  gentleman,  even 
in  knocking  him  down.  He  had  deserved  that.  And 
afterwards  Codrington  had  helped  him  to  his  rooms  and 
put  him  on  to  the  bed  and  bent  over  him  and  patted  his 
shoulder  and  said,  "You'll  be  all  right  in  the  morning, 
old  man." 

Luttrell  remembered  these  things  as  a  kind  of  dark 
and  horrible  dream.  For  an  hour  or  more  he  sat  staring 
into  the  cold  grate  where  last  night's  ashes  lay.  His  face 
was  white  and  set  as  he  gripped  the  arms  of  the  chair. 


196  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

It  seemed  to  him  in  that  hour  of  remorse  that  he  had 
gone  one  step  further  down  the  path  of  degradation.  He 
was  gradually  sinking  into  the  mire  of  Fleet  Street.  Its 
mud  was  upon  him  now,  body  and  soul. 

He  got  up  shivering  and  changed  his  suit,  and  tried 
to  brush  the  filth  off  the  clothes  he  had  worn  last  night. 
But  the  stains  of  the  slush  in  Fleet  Street  would  not 
come  off. 


CHAPTER  XI 

WHEN  Frank  Luttrell  went  to  the  office  at  half-past 
eleven  in  the  morning  he  hoped  devoutly  that  he  would 
not  look  as  bad  as  he  felt.  His  head  was  still  throbbing 
as  though  a  steam  hammer  were  at  work  in  his  brain, 
it  seemed  as  though  his  eyes  were  deep  in  their  sockets, 
and  his  tongue  felt  two  sizes  too  big  for  his  palate.  But 
worse  than  this  was  the  sense  of  shame  which  made  him 
afraid  of  meeting  his  colleagues,  and  especially  afraid  of 
Katherine  Halstead  and  Margaret  Hubbard.  He  felt 
that  he  ought  to  go  through  some  ceremony  of  purifica- 
tion before  going  into  the  presence  of  either  of  these 
women. 

As  it  happened  Katherine  was  the  first  person  he  met 
when  he  went  into  the  reporters'  room.  She  gave  him  a 
cheery  "Good-morning,"  and  he  answered  in  such  a  queer 
strained  voice  that  she  instantly  looked  up,  suspecting 
that  all  was  not  well  with  him.  She  stared  at  his  white 
face  and  sunken  eyes,  and  gave  a  little  cry  of  alarm. 

"How  ill  you  look!    What  on  earth  is  the  matter?" 

"Nothing,"  said  Frank. 

"Oh  yes,  there  is  something  the  matter  with  you," 
said  Katherine.  "You  are  like  a  ghost.  Have  you  had 
bad  news  or  anything?" 

Frank  laughed,  rather  feebly,  and  sat  down  in  a  chair. 

He  felt  weak  about  the  knees. 

"I  suppose  I  have  got  a  bit  of  a  chill." 

Katherine  crossed  swiftly  over  to  him  and  put  her 
hand  on  his  forehead. 

197 


198  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Influenza !"  she  said.  "You  must  go  to  bed  at  once, 
Frank." 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  called  him  by  his  Chris- 
tian name,  and  the  touch  of  her  cool  hand  upon  his  ach- 
ing forehead  was  thrilling  to  him.  But  he  shrank  from 
that  touch,  and  thrust  her  back  gently  with  his  hand. 

"Don't.     You  ought  not  to  touch  me  \" 

He  meant  that  he  was  unworthy,  that  after  his  moral 
downfall,  he  ought  not  to  allow  the  girl  to  come  near 
him. 

But  she  laughed,  and  said  that  she  was  not  afraid  of  in- 
fection. Then  she  rang  the  bell  and  sent  the  boy  out  for 
sixpenny  worth  of  quinine. 

Frank  cursed  himself  as  a  hypocrite.  How  could  he 
explain  to  her  that  he  was  not  suffering  from  influenza, 
but  from — drink? 

"How  good  you  are !     It  makes  up  for " 

"For  what  ?"  said  Katherine. 

"For  not  having  had  a  sister." 

"It  seems  to  me  that  you  want  some  one  to  look  after 
you,"  said  Katherine  very  seriously. 

"Yes,  I  believe  I  do.  I  want "  He  did  not  finish 

his  sentence.  What  he  would  have  liked  to  say  was  that 
he  wanted  Katherine  to  look  after  him,  that  he  wanted  to 
tell  her  that  if  they  could  make  an  arrangement  to  look 
after  each  other  along  the  road  he  would  never  be  un- 
well again,  but  go  through  the  world  with  a  singing  heart. 
With  her  hand  in  his  he  would  be  strong  to  resist  tempta- 
tion. He  would  keep  his  heart  clean  for  her.  He  would 
avoid  the  club  and  all  places  which  led  to  a  headache 
in  the  morning.  But,  of  course,  he  could  not  tell  her  any 
of  these  things,  so  that  he  stammered  and  blushed  and 
looked  a  fool. 

"I  shall  have  to  tell  Mother  Hubbard  about  this,"  said 
Katherine,  with  a  mischievous  gleam  in  her  eyes.  "She 


fTHE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE     199 

will  have  to  crochet  a  woolen  scarf  for  you.  She  has 
made  one  for  nearly  every  member  of  the  staff." 

"Oh,  don't  tell  Mother  Hubbard.     I  beg  of  you  not!" 

"Well,  I  don't  intend  to  tell  her  at  this  precise  mo- 
ment," said  Katherine,  "because  she  would  deprive  me 
of  the  employment  of  making  you  take  nasty  medicine. 
You  have  no  idea  how  strong  the  nursing  instinct  is 
among  women.  It  is  the  only  time  when  v/e  really  have 
the  upper  hand  of  men.  ...  I  mean,  when  they  are  un- 
well. Now  you  must  be  very  good,  or  I  shall  at  once 
send  for  Margaret  Hubbard.  She  has  been  a  profes- 
sional nurse,  and  stands  no  nonsense  whatever." 

The  office  boy  came  back  with  the  quinine,  and  Kath- 
erine, who  really  seemed  to  be  enjoying  herself,  meas- 
ured out  a  stiff  dose  in  a  tumbler  which  she  brought  from 
the  lavatory. 

"I  say !"  said  Frank.  "Can't  I  do  something  different 
for  you?  If  you  ask  me  to  put  my  hand  into  a  burning 
fire  I  will  do  so,  but  I  really  can't  take  that  quinine." 

"What  nonsense  you  do  talk,"  said  Katherine.  "Now 
be  brave  and  drink  this  and  I  will  give  you  a  lump  of 
sugar  afterwards." 

Frank  stared  at  the  whitish  liquid  in  the  glass  and  went 
pale.  He  wondered,  with  terror,  what  the  chemical  re- 
sult would  be  of  quinine  versus  alcohol.  He  felt  as- 
sured that  if  he  drank  it  he  would  die. 

"I  can't  drink  it.  Honour  bright,  I  really  can't,"  he 
said  piteously. 

"What?"  cried  Katherine  incredulously.  "Do  you 
mean  to  say  you  funk  it?  Pull  yourself  together,  and 
play  cricket  ?" 

The  old  school  slang  was  a  challenge  to  him.  It 
brought  the  blood  back  to  his  brain  and  tightened  his 
nerves. 


200  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Look  here,"  he  said.  "If  you'll  give  me  a  kiss  in- 
stead of  a  lump  of  sugar  I'll  do  it." 

Katherine  blushed  vividly,  and  was  silent  for  a  rro- 
ment. 

"All  right,"  she  said,  and  Frank  saw  that  though  she 
had  lowered  her  head,  she  had  the  flicker  of  a  smile  on 
her  lips. 

He  drank  the  quinine  at  one  draught,  and  for  a  mo- 
ment it  seemed  as  if  his  head  was  bursting. 

Then  he  went  forward  to  Katherine  to  receive  his 
reward.  She  had  gone  rather  pale,  and  shrank  back  as 
he  bent  down  his  face  towards  her. 

"Do  you  mind  if  I  don't  keep  my  promise?"  she  said. 
"I  have  just  remembered " 

"Remembered  what?" 

"It  wouldn't  be  quite  playing  the  game." 

"Whose  game?" 

"Well,  it  wouldn't  be  quite  right  of  me,  I  think,"  she 
said  simply,  and  for  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  there  was 
trouble  in  her  eyes. 

Then  Frank  remembered  something.  He  remembered 
that  when  she  had  put  her  hand  on  his  forehead  he  had 
shrunk  from  her  touch,  not  thinking  himself  worthy. 
Now  the  old  feeling  of  shame  came  over  him  again,  and 
with  something  like  despair  he  agreed  in  his  heart  that 
it  would  not  be  right  for  Katherine  to  kiss  him. 

"If  you  think  that,"  he  said  slowly,  as  though  the 
words  were  dragged  out  of  him,  "I  will  not  ask  you." 

She  drew  a  quick  breath,  and  there  was  a  curious  ex- 
pression on  her  face  when  she  looked  up  at  him. 

"Oh,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  "thank  you  for  letting 
me  off!" 

They  were  both  embarrassed  now.  Frank  tried  to 
hide  his  nervousness  by  poking  the  fire  and  whistling. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  201 

Katherine  had  gone  to  her  desk  and  was  pretending  to 
arrange  her  papers. 

"Don't  you  think  you  ought  to  get  home  and  go  to 
bed  ?"  she  said  presently. 

"Good  lord,  no,"  said  Frank.  "I'm  feeling  as  right 
as  a  trivet  after  that  horrible  quinine." 

They  both  laughed  and  the  momentary  spell  of  self- 
consciousness  seemed  to  be  broken. 

"There  now!"  cried  Katherine.  "Wasn't  I  a  wise 
woman  ?  I  shall  be  able  to  crow  over  Mother  Hubbard. 
She  is  a  homeopathist  and  gives  little  pilules  to  her  pa- 
tients. I  believe  in  nasty  liquid  medicines.  They  in- 
spire so  much  more  confidence." 

The  truth  was  that  Frank  was  feeling  an  awful  wreck, 
and  his  head  seemed  to  be  on  fire.  But  he  was  glad  that 
Katherine  took  the  credit  of  a  cure.  His  suffering  was 
a  kind  of  penance  for  his  folly,  and  not  profitless  if  it 
gave  her  any  pleasure.  Soon  afterwards  she  went  out 
to  work  and  he  was  left  alone  with  his  thoughts.  They 
were  not  pleasant,  for  he  was  now  wondering  why  she 
had  first  promised  to  kiss  and  then  refused.  She  said  it 
would  not  be  playing  the  game,  and  he  asked,  "Whose 
game?"  She  had  not  answered  that  question,  but  Frank 
guessed  the  answer.  It  was  Christopher  Codrington. 
His  spirits  sank  very  low  after  that,  and  he  felt  sick  at 
heart — sick  in  another  sense,  for  the  quinine  had  made 
him  feel  horribly  queer.  He  also  must  play  the  game — 
with  Codrington,  who  had  behaved  like  a  gentleman  last 
night.  And  the  only  way  in  which  he  could  hope  to  play 
the  game  was  to  avoid  the  society  of  Katherine  Halstead, 
whom  he  desired  most  in  the  world.  "This  game  of  life 
is  not  so  easy  as  cricket,"  said  Frank  Luttrell. 

Later  in  the  day  he  met  Codrington,  who  looked  at 
him  curiously. 


202  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"My  dear  friend,"  he  said,  smiling,  "you  look  quite 
washed  out.  I  am  afraid  you  had  a  bad  night." 

"I  want  to  forget  all  about  it,"  said  Frank.  He  flushed 
hotly  and  then  held  out  his  hand. 

"I  behaved  like  a  cad  last  night.     Do  you  forgive  me  ?" 

Codrington  took  his  hand  in  a  limp  grasp. 

"Tut,  tut,"  he  said,  "and  again  tut!"  He  insisted 
upon  taking  Luttrell  out  to  luncheon.  He  explained  that 
Frank  needed  a  tonic.  He  knew  a  recipe  which  put  any 
man  right  in  a  twinkling  of  an  eye  after  a  rather  "severe 
experience."  He  was  not  a  vain  prophet,  for  after 
drinking  a  dose  obtained  at  a  chemist's  shop  on  the  way 
to  his  eating-house  Frank  felt  more  brisk  and  decidedly 
hungry. 

"I  have  never  known  it  to  fail,"  said  Codrington.  "It 
is  a  most  useful  recipe  to  a  man  of  the  world." 

"A  man  of  the  world?"  said  Frank.  "Is  that  what 
you  call  it?" 

Over  the  luncheon-table  Codrington,  to  Frank's  amaze- 
ment, expressed  his  pleasure  at  having  discovered  him 
liable  to  the  ordinary  weaknesses  of  human  nature.  Pre- 
viously he  had  been  under  the  impression  that  Frank  was 
one  of  those  high  souls,  those  pure  and  ethereal  beings 
who  never  bring  themselves  down  to  the  level  of  the 
earth.  Now,  that  was  a  mistake.  It  might  be  very  nice 
to  be  a  pure,  ethereal  being,  but,  after  all,  the  world  was 
made  for  men  and  women  who  always  felt  uncomfortable 
in  the  presence  of  superior  beings.  He  believed  that  if 
a  man  wanted  to  do  any  good  work  in  literature — and 
he  presumed  Frank  had  ambitions  that  way — he  must 
have  learnt  all  the  great  lessons  of  life.  He  must 
have  loved,  he  must  have  suffered,  he  must  have  seen 
death.  .  He  must  have  been  hungry.  He  must  have 
known  the  sting  of  poverty.  He  must  have  enjoyed  lux- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  203 

ury.  And  certainly  not  the  least  important  lesson  in  life 
was  to  know  how  to  get  drunk  like  a  gentleman. 

Frank  did  not  know  whether  to  laugh  or  to  be  angry. 
Codrington's  pleasure  in  his  descent  from  "superiority" 
was  worse  than  contemptuous  words. 

"Unfortunately/'  he  said,  "I  got  drunk  like  a  cad. 
My  only  excuse  is  that  I  did  it  unconsciously.  I  forg6t 
to  keep  a  watch  on  my  glass." 

"Besides,"  said  Codrington,  "you  drank  whisky,  and 
it  is  better  to  drink  wine.  The  finest  gentlemen  who 
ever  lived — I  mean  of  course  English  gentlemen  of  the 
Georgian  period — never  drank  spirit.  The  juice  of  the 
grape,  good  old  port,  was  their  wine  of  life." 

Codrington  lifted  a  glass  of  the  same  juice  and  held  it 
up  to  the  light. 

"This  is  pretty  good.  I  am  sorry  you  won't  join  me, 
Luttrell." 

He  enlarged  on  the  need  of  emotional  experience.  He 
was  sure  that  the  genius  of  English  life  was  being  slowly 
stifled  by  the  atmosphere  of  conventional  respectability 
which  permeated  every  circle  of  society.  In  the  old  days 
respectability  was  a  quality  belonging  exclusively  to  the 
middle  classes — haberdashers,  and  small  shopkeepers  of 
all  kinds.  A  gentleman  and  man  of  letters  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  this  bourgeois  code  of  manners.  In 
those  days  a  gentleman  was  so  sure  of  himself  that  he 
could  enjoy  the  society  of  jockeys,  stablemen,  prize-fight- 
ers, peasants  and  private  soldiers,  good  fellows,  who 
come  in  touch  with  the  natural  things  of  life — sport, 
fighting,  and  mother  earth — without  for  a  moment  losing 
his  self-respect  or  dignity.  A  gentleman  had  such  little 
need  for  asserting  his  rank  and  superiority  that  he  could 
kiss  a  pretty  chambermaid  or  have  an  evening's  carouse 
in  a  country  inn,  or  go  out  for  a  merry  night  with  the 
Mohawks,  turning  over  the  old  watchmen  in  their  boxes, 


204  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

or  playing  the  amateur  highwayman,  without  any  loss 
of  prestige  or  social  caste.  Now-a-days  there  was  such 
a  shuffling  together  of  the  various  social  grades,  and  a 
gentleman  was  so  confoundedly  nervous  of  being  taken 
for  a  counter-jumper,  that — curious  paradox — he  be- 
haved exactly  as  if  he  were  one,  and  led  a  respectable, 
colourless,  uneventful  life,  which  sapped  his  imagination, 
enervated  his  manhood,  and  made  him  as  uninteresting 
as  a  tailor's  dummy.  The  narrow  life  of  the  ordinary 
well-to-do  man,  said  Codrington,  is  quite  terrible.  He 
marries  because  it  is  the  right  thing  to  do,  and  without 
having  once  felt  the  divine  thrill  of  passion.  He  gener- 
ally marries  a  wife  as  stupid  as  himself,  and  they  have 
children  more  stupid  than  either  of  them.  The'  wife 
gives  "At-Homes"  where  more  stupid  people  come  to 
bore  each  other,  and  to  be  bored,  the  husband  goes  as 
regularly  to  his  stupid  club  as  a  civil  servant  clerk  to 
his  office,  and  his  ideas  are  strictly  limited  by  the  leading 
article  in  the  Morning  Post  or  some  other  dull  paper 
which  is  on  the  exact  level  of  his  dull  intellect. 

"My  dear  Luttrell/5  said  Codrington,  solemnly,  "where 
is  the  romance  of  life?  Where  is  the  mystery,  the 
poetry,  the  passion,  the  adventure  which  men  need  to 
make  them  something  more  than  respectable  fatheads?'* 

Luttrell  interrupted  the  monologue. 

"It  is  all  around  one,"  he  said.  "I  find  it  in  every  Lon- 
don street,  and,  to  speak  plainly,  in  my  own  heart — 
where  there  is  more  mystery  and  more  adventure  than 
I  like/' 

"You  have  answered  my  question,"  said  Codrington  in 
his  grave  way.  "You  are  indeed  right.  To  the  man 
who  has  a  sensitive,  imaginative  soul,  life  is  still  full  of 
poetry  and  adventure.  But  that  sensibility  and  imagina- 
tion must  not  be  stifled.  They  must  be  watered  and  fer- 
tilised by  the  secret  well-springs  of  emotion.  They  must 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  205 

thrill  to  the  passionate  impulses  of  the  human  heart. 
They  must  not  be  deadened  by  the  awful  conventional- 
ities of  modern  society.  A  man  must  go  out  seeking  ad- 
venture, not  afraid  of  himself,  not  timorous  of  venturing 
into  strange  by-ways,  not  fearful  of  raising  the  wine  of 
life  to  his  lips  and  drinking  it  to  the  dregs." 

"Supposing  there  is  poison  in  the  cup?"  said  Frank, 
wincing  at  the  memory  of  his  own  experience  of  the  pre- 
vious night. 

"Oh,  still  drain  it  to  the  dregs,"  said  Codrington,  pour- 
ing himself  out  another  glass  of  wine.  "It  is  better  to 
be  poisoned  than  choked.  A  man  who  has  never  tasted 
poison  never  realises  the  true  taste  of  nectar." 

Luttrell  was  impatient  with  the  man. 

"Those  are  vague  words,"  he  said.  "What  do  you 
mean  by  them  ?  Do  you  mean  that  a  man  has  a  right  to 
lead  an  immoral  life,  breaking  women's  hearts  in  order 
to  satisfy  his  emotions  and  gain  new  experience,  and  to 
get  drunk  in  order  to  understand  the  psychology  of 
drunkenness  ?" 

For  a  moment  Codrington  stared  at  him,  and  a  slight 
flush  crept  into  his  handsome,  pale  face. 

"You  do  me  an  injustice,"  he  said.  "Breaking  wom- 
en's hearts  is  not  a  pastime  I  advocate — though  it  is  bet- 
ter perhaps  to  break  a  woman's  heart  than  to  go  through 
life  as  a  mere  mummy,  a  body  of  dust,  swathed  in  clothes. 
In  a  man's  relationship  to  women  he  should  always  be  a 
gentleman,  and  the  true  significance  of  that  good  word 
is  not  cruelty  but  sympathy,  not  a  cold,  selfish  heart  but 
one  quick  to  respond  to  an  appeal,  quick  to  give,  gener- 
ous in  all  the  gifts  of  the  spirit.  When  I  say  that  a  man 
should  know  how  to  get  drunk  like  a  gentleman,  I  mean 
that  he  should  allow  his  qualities  of  comradeship,  genial- 
ity, and  imagination  to  be  stimulated  in  good  company. 
There  is  something  mean  and  miserable  in  a  man  who 


206          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

drinks  water  while  others  are  drinking  wine.  It  is  as 
though  he  would  keep  his  emotions  under  strict  lock  and 
key,  hugging  them  to  himself  like  a  miser  with  his  gold." 

"Last  night,"  said  Frank,  "I  did  not  drink  water.  I 
drank  whisky — to  the  dregs — and  a  little  while  later  I  be- 
haved as  a  bounder  and  lay  in  the  filth  of  Fleet  Street. 
What's  the  moral?" 

"You  are  a  better  man  for  it,"  said  Codrington,  smil- 
ing. "It  was  a  strange  adventure,  in  which,  if  you  could 
only  see  it,  there  was  a  mystical  beauty.  The  Prodigal 
Son  was  a  much  more  loveable  person  than  his  respec- 
table brother.  After  eating  husks  with  the  swine  he 
came  back  to  his  father's  house,  and  his  tears  were  like 
pearls  of  great  price.  Do  you  not  understand?  Tears 
and  laughter,  passion  and  remorse,  despair  and  joy — all 
those  emotions  of  the  soul  make  up  the  music  of  life. 
The  respectable  man  never  sheds  tears.  He  smiles,  but 
he  does  not  laugh;  he  regrets,  but  he  does  not  despair. 
To  him  joy  is  something  indecent  and  vulgar.  He  de- 
sires only  to  be  comfortable.  Believe  me,  respectability 
is  another  name  for  death.  There  can  be  no  great  vir- 
tues in  men  who  are  above  the  weaknesses  of  the  flesh." 

"You  are  too  much  of  a  pessimist,"  said  Luttrell. 
'The  Flesh  and  the  Devil  have  not  yet  lost  their  hold 
on  human  nature." 

Codrington  quizzed  his  wine-glass. 

"Perhaps  you  take  me  too  seriously,"  he  said. 

Luttrell  stared  at  him.     This  was  truly  an  anti-climax. 

"I  believe  it  is  all  a  part  of  your  pose !"  he  said. 

Codrington  laughed  and  said,  "My  dear  Luttrell,  con- 
versation would  lose  all  its  flowers  if  we  were  always 
quite  sincere." 

At  the  end  of  luncheon  he  insisted  upon  paying  for 
Frank's  meal,  and  with  his  somewhat  theatrical  air  of 
graciousness  and  dignity  would  not  allow  this  pleasure, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  207 

as  he  called  it,  to  be  denied  him.  But  when  Codrington 
pulled  out  his  money  he  found  that  he  had  one  shilling 
and  sixpence  and  a  few  coppers.  For  a  moment  he  was 
slightly  embarrassed,  but  only  for  a  moment.  He  called 
up  the  waiter  to  him,  and  said,  "You  will  add  this  to  my 
account,  if  you  please." 

The  waiter  hesitated.  He  was,  strange  to  say,  an  Eng- 
lishman, and  belonged  to  an  old-fashioned  eating-house, 
in  a  narrow  court  off  Fleet  Street,  which  is  popularly 
supposed  to  have  been  one  of  Dr.  Johnson's  haunts. 
Perhaps  tradition  had  something  to  do  with  the  discreet 
way  in  which  he  coughed  behind  his  hand,  and  said, 
"Quite  as  you  please,  sir."  When  he  helped  Codring- 
ton on  with  his  overcoat  he  took  occasion  to  whisper  a 
few  words  to  him,  and  Luttrell  heard  Codrington  reply, 
"My  dear  John,  tell  your  good  master  to  be  patient  and 
he  shall  be  paid.  If  he  is  impatient  I  shall  give  my  pa- 
tronage elsewhere.  Will  you  tell  him  that  with  my  com- 
pliments ?"  He  then  poured  some  coppers  into  the  wait- 
er's hand,  and  adjusting  his  hat  to  the  right  angle,  walked 
out  with  the  elegant  dignity  of  Count  D'Orsay,  the  last  of 
the  Dandies. 

On  the  following  night  Luttrell  went  again  to  the  flat 
in  Shaftesbury  Avenue.  He  brought  some  spring  flow- 
ers for  Margaret  Hubbard  which  he  had  gathered  with 
his  own  hands  in  a  cottage  garden  in  Somersetshire. 
After  his  luncheon  with  Codrington  he  had  been  sent 
off  to  interview  five  octogenarians  who  lived  in  one  vil- 
lage. As  Luttrell  travelled  down  to  Somersetshire  in  an 
express  from  Paddington  he  stared  out  of  the  carriage 
window,  and  watched  the  fields  flying  past,  and  the 
woods,  and  the  villages,  and  the  sign-posts  along  the  rail- 
way line,  which  told  him  at  intervals  that  he  was  twenty, 
thirty,  forty,  fifty  miles  away  from  London.  It  was  an 
afternoon  in  early  spring,  and  bright  sunshine  chased 


208          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

light  shadows  across  the  swiftly-moving  panorama  of  the 
landscape.  Every  glimpse  made  a  quick  impression  of 
movement,  airiness,  and  a  light-hearted  hilarity  of  nature. 
It  seemed  to  Luttrell  as  though  the  spirit  of  Spring  were 
like  a  young  girl  he  saw  from  the  carriage  window,  run- 
ning down  to  a  wayside  station  with  flying  skirts.  Fleecy 
clouds  were  scudding  across  the  sky.  Clothes  hanging 
out  to  dry  in  cottage  gardens  were  waving  like  banners 
in  the  wind.  The  brooks  swollen  by  rain  were  rushing 
swiftly  to  the  rivers.  And  the  woods  awakened  from 
their  winter  sleep,  and  just  putting  on  their  palest  green, 
swayed  and  tossed  in  the  swift  breezes.  Frank  gazed 
at  the  moving  scenery  and  it  had  a  curious  effect  upon 
him.  He  pulled  down  the  carriage  window — he  was 
alone  on  the  journey — and  let  the  wind  rush  into  his 
open  mouth,  into  his  eyes,  and  through  his  light  brown 
hair. 

"Oh!"  he  cried  aloud.  "This  is  cleansing!" 
As  mile  after  mile  sped  by,  hurling  him  away  from 
Fleet  Street,  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  dust  and  grime 
and  squalor  of  London  life  were  being  swept  out  of  his 
very  soul  by  this  sweet,  strong  wind  which  fanned  his 
face,  and  came  like  spring-water  into  his  lungs.  Some 
touch  of  the  old  pantheistic  ecstasy  took  possession  of 
him.  He  put  a  hand  out  of  the  window  and  washed  it  in 
the  clean,  swift  air.  As  the  train  went  steadily  into  the 
heart  of  the  southlands,  he  sat  in  his  corner  facing  the  sun 
and  bathing  in  its  light. 

When  he  stepped  out  of  the  train  on  to  the  small  way- 
side station  and  strode  down  a  winding  road  towards 
the  village,  he  was  uplifted  by  a  strange  exhilaration.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  he  was  like  a  man  returning  from  war 
to  the  quiet  sanctuary  of  his  native  place;  behind  him 
the  memory  of  evil  passions  and  fierce  deeds,  here,  once 
more,  the  old  homes  under  those  thatched  roofs,  where 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  209 

life  is  simple  and  where  Time  itself  treads  with  a  soft 
footfall.  The  thought  was  absurd,  for  he  had  been  not 
much  further  than  Fleet  Street.  But,  although  only  a 
few  months  had  passed  since  he  had  left  the  country 
for  the  town,  his  life  as  a  journalist  had  changed  him  in 
that  time,  body  and  soul.  He  was  thinner,  and  his  face 
was  no  longer  bronzed,  and  when  he  thought  of  himself 
as  the  assistant  schoolmaster  at  King's  Marshwood  he 
seemed  to  be  looking  back  across  a  gulf  of  years'.  Five 
months'  wear  and  tear  in  Fleet  Street  make  a  lot  of  dif- 
ference to  a  man  with  a  temperament. 

Frank  enjoyed  himself  in  a  quiet  way  in  the  Somerset- 
shire village.  He  found  out  the  five  old  cronies,  and  add- 
ing up  their  combined  ages  found  that  it  made  a  sum  of 
four  hundred  and  fifteen  years.  He  found  them  all  in 
a  row  in  the  taproom  of  the  Montacute  Arms.  With 
toothless  gums,  but  with  eyes  as  bright  as  school-boys' 
eyes,  and  wrinkled  old  faces,  tanned  and  weather-beaten, 
and  curiously  like  the  gargoyles  on  the  tower  of  the  vil- 
lage church,  they  told  him  stories  of  their  young  days, 
and  repeated  old  jokes  which  had  caused  them  to  cackle 
with  laughter,  and  dig  each  other  with  horny  hands,  for 
fifty  years  or  more.  One  of  them  had  been  a  serjeant  in 
the  Royal  Fusiliers  in  the  days  of  King  William  IV.  He 
had  been  through  the  Crimean  War  and  seen  "a  bit  o' 
fighting/'  as  he  called  it,  in  other  "vurrin  parts."  But 
his  strongest  remembrance  was,  not  the  shock  of  battle 
and  the  bloody  work  of  a  bayonet  charge,  or  the  horrors 
of  the  trenches  before  Sebastopol,  but  the  two  rows  of 
brass  buttons  which  he  used  to  wear  on  his  tunic  in  the 
brave  old  days  when  he  was  a  straight  and  proper  lad. 

"O  dearie  lor,"  said  the  old  man.  "How  the  gals  did 
use  to  catch  their  hair  in  they  gowd  buttons,  when  they 
did  use  to  zit  on  my  knee  on  a  zummer  afternoon !  Oh, 


210          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

dearie  lor,  he !  he !  They  did  use  to  tangle  their  curls 
in  they  buttons  o'  mine!" 

Sixty  years  had  passed  since  old  Jock  had  been  a  gay 
young  dog  with  the  girls.  Perhaps  one  or  two  of  these 
girls  were  now  great-grandmothers.  The  others  were 
dead  and  buried  and  forgotten,  forgotten  perhaps  by 
everyone  living  except  this  old  yokel  with  toothless  gums 
who  remembered  how  he  had  kissed  them  when  their  lips 
were  ripe  and  sweet. 

Frank  wrote  his  "story"  about  the  five  octogenarians 
in  the  parlour  of  the  Montacute  Arms,  and  he  was  rather 
pleased  with  the  humour  and  sentiment  of  it  when  he 
read  it  over  to  himself — and  then  went  out  for  a  walk  in 
the  cold  night.  As  he  strode  along  a  good  hard  country 
road  with  his  face  to  the  wind,  in  which  there  was  the 
sweet,  subtle  and  rather  intoxicating  scent  of  the  moist 
earth,  he  seemed  to  be  walking  further  and  further  away 
from  Fleet  Street.  The  idea  was  rather  haunting  to  him 
and  he  put  on  a  good  pace,  and  the  lean,  lithe  figure  sped 
swiftly  along  followed  by  his  long  shadow,  thrown  by 
the  high  moon  upon  the  white  road  behind  him.  This 
was  better  than  the  streets  of  London,  with  their  glaring 
lights  and  hurrying  crowds  and  their  strident,  ceaseless 
noise.  Here  there  was  no  sound  but  the  steady  beat 
of  his  own  footsteps,  no  lights  but  the  silver  rays  of  the 
moon,  and  no  other  human  soul  but  his  own,  which 
seemed  to  walk  a  little  ahead  of  his  body,  so  that  he  could 
stare  at  it  and  ask  it  questions.  One  question  he  asked, 
again  and  again,  "Why  go  back?"  And  his  soul  said  to 
him,  "Don't  go  back.  Leave  all  that  squalor  and  turmoil 
and  restlessness.  Stay  here,  where  the  earth  smells  sweet 
and  where  a  man  may  hear  his  heart  beat." 

So  Frank  walked  on  for  nearly  ten  miles,  and  all  the 
time  he  was  tempted  to  go  further  and  further  away 
from  the  newspaper  office  where  his  spirit  was  being 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  211 

crushed  in  the  wheels  of  a  soulless  machine.  He  would 
take  a  country  cottage,  a  labourer's  cottage,  on  is.  6d.  a 
week,  and  write  books  about  nature,  or  -fairy-tales  for 
children,  or  navels  which  were  grown-up  fairy-tales  for 
grown-up  children.  He  would  be  his  own  master,  and 
live  quietly,  and  have  time  to  read  old  masters  again,  and 
perhaps  pick  up  some  of  his  early  ambitions,  and  re- 
member some  of  the  old  day-dreams.  Then  suddenly 
he  stopped,  looked  at  his  watch  and  turned  back.  He 
was  going  back  to  the  village,  but  he  knew  also  that 
he  was  going  back  to  Fleet  Street,  and  his  footsteps 
lagged  a  little  on  the  homeward  journey. 

He  slept  soundly  that  night  in  a  bedroom  with  great 
beams  above  his  head  and  panelled  walls  where  rats 
played  hide-and-seek.  In  the  morning  he  forgot  all  his 
truant  thoughts  of  the  night  before.  His  spirits  were 
high,  and  he  whistled  an  accompaniment  to  the  birds 
whose  spring  songs  came  into  his  open  window.  He 
wondered  what  Katherine  was  doing  at  this  hour ;  still  in 
bed,  no  doubt,  after  a  late  night,  with  her  pretty  face 
on  a  white  pillow;  or  perhaps  sitting  up  to  yawn  and 
stretch  her  arms  out  to  Mother  Hubbard,  who  always,  he 
knew,  brought  her  up  an  early  cup  of  tea.  He  would  go 
round  to  them  to-night  and  take  some  flowers  to  them. 

The  countryside  was  divine  that  morning  with  bril- 
liant sunshine.  But  Frank,  having  given  a  cottager  six- 
pence for  a  big  bunch  of  "daffies,"  caught  the  first  train 
up  to  town,  and  on  the  journey  cursed  it  for  its  slowness 
in  taking  him  back  to  Fleet  Street. 

He  was  disappointed  at  not  finding  either  Katherine  or 
Margaret  at  the  office.  Katherine  had  gone  off  in  quest 
of  an  Italian  princess  who  had  married  her  groom  and 
was  reported  to  be  living  at  Maidenhead,  and  Margaret 
had  sent  a  note  to  say  that  she  was  sneezing  three  times 
a  minute  and  thought  it  decent  to  hide  herself  for  a  day. 


212  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Frank  loitered  through  the  afternoon  with  very  littl< 
to  do,  and  then,  after  a  cheap  supper,  took  his  daffodil; 
from  a  tumbler  on  his  table  in  Staple  Inn  and  went  ou 
with  them  to  Shaftesbury  Avenue. 

Margaret  Hubbard  was  alone  in  her  room,  and  as  h< 
went  in  she  was  seated  at  the  piano  playing  in  a  soft 
dreamy  way.  She  was  in  a  black  dress  covered  with  ; 
kind  of  gauze  or  netting,  and  her  face  was  illuminec 
by  the  candles  on  the  piano,  the  room  being  otherwis< 
in  darkness.  Frank  had  been  let  into  the  flat  by  the  olc 
woman  who  did  the  "charing"  and  he  now  stood  quieth 
inside  the  room  watching  Margaret,  who  was  unaware  o: 
his  presence.  Some  people  called  Margaret  Hubbarc 
"plain,"  but,  for  the  first  time,  he  was  impressed  by  th< 
spiritual  beauty  of  that  strong,  womanly  face,  upon  whicl 
the  candlelight  shed  a  soft  glamour.  Her  fingers  wen 
striking  chords  very  quietly  and  tenderly  until  suddenly 
they  stopped,  and  Margaret  Hubbard  spread  her  arm; 
out  upon  the  keys  and  laid  her  head  upon  them.  Franl 
was  startled.  It  seemed  as  if  she  were  crying,  or  that  ir 
touching  one  of  the  chords  she  had  stirred  her  own  heart- 
strings, awakening  some  old  memory  which  had  made 
her  bow  her  head  swiftly.  He  wondered  whether  h( 
should  steal  out  of  the  room.  He  had  been  a  cad  tc 
come  in  so  silently.  A  man  has  no  right  to  come  una- 
wares upon  a  woman  in  her  loneliness.  He  stood  quite 
still  for  a  second,  but  Margaret  seemed  to  become  aware 
of  some  presence  in  that  mysterious  way  which  reveals 
one  human  being  to  another  in  the  dark. 

"Is  anybody  here?"  she  said  quietly,  lifting  her  head. 

Frank  stepped  forward. 

"Yes,  Frank  Luttrell.  .  .  .  I'm  sorry,  Mother  Hub- 
bard. You  did  not  hear  me  when  I  came  in,  a  momenl 
ago." 

She  turned  on  the  electric  light,  and  laughed  when  she 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  213 

said,  "I  thought  it  was  a  ghost.  I'm  jolly  glad  it's  a 
nice  boy  who  has  come  to  keep  me  company." 

There  was  a  gleam  of  moisture  in  her  eyes  as  she 
smiled  at  him,  but  Frank  was  relieved  to  hear  her  cheery 
voice,  and  to  see  her  face  as  quiet  and  calm  as  usual. 

"It  is  a  foolish  thing  to  indulge  in  waking-dreams  in 
the  dark,"  she  said.  "But  tell  me  how  are  you,  and  what 
have  you  been  doing  with  yourself?  Katherine  told 
me  you  were  in  the  grips  of  influenza.  If  so,  it  seems  to 
suit  you." 

"It  wasn't  influenza,"  said  Frank.  "It  was — something 
else." 

He  did  not  tell  her  then;  but  later  in  the  evening  he 
made  his  confession  to  her  and  described  how  he  had  got 
"beastly -drunk"  at  the  club.  He  made  one  reservation; 
he  did  not  tell  Margaret  Hubbard  how  Codrington  had 
knocked  him  down  in  Fleet  Street. 

Margaret  listened  to  his  story  quietly.  She  did  not 
reproach  him  or  show  any  disgust  at  his  "beastliness"  as 
he  called  it.  But  in  her  own  common-sense  way  she  told 
him  some  of  the  things  she  knew,  as  an  experienced 
woman. 

"That  sort  of  thing  doesn't  pay  in  the  long  run.  .  .  . 
The  club  has  a  bad  influence  on  many  young  men  who 
come  into  Fleet  Street.  It  is  handy  to  their  offices,  of 
course,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  go  over  the  way  and  warm 
themselves  up  with  a  whisky  or  two  while  they  are  wait- 
ing for  a  job.  But  it  grows  into  a  habit,  and  without 
getting  really  drunk  they  take  more  whisky  than  is  good 
for  them.  ...  I  think  many  of  the  boys  begin  to  drink 
out  of  a  spirit  of  adventure.  The  clink  of  the  glasses  is 
merry  music  to  them,  and  they  find  their  tongues  are 
loosened,  and  they  say  witty  and  wild  things,  and  for 
an  hour  or  two  enjoy  the  sense  of  being  Bohemian.  Isn't 
that  it?" 


214  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"That's  it,"  said  Frank.     "Bohemia  is  a  tradition." 

"It  is  a  bad  old  tradition,"  said  Margaret.  "I  hate 
the  word.  I  know  middle-aged  men  who  go  once  a 
week  in  evening  dress  to  'Bohemian*  clubs  where  they 
repeat  stale  old  stories  which  they  would  be  ashamed  to 
tell  their  wives,  and  make  themselves  fuddled,  and  then 
go  home  by  tram  to  Streatham  Hill,  or  somewhere,  afraid 
to  face  the  poor  wife  who  is  waiting  up  for  them. 
There's  not  much  romance  about  that,  is  there  ?" 

"Precious  little,"  said  Frank. 

She  thought  there  was  more  excuse  for  journalists  than 
for  any  other  men.  But  it  was  not  less  pitiful.  She 
had  known  brilliant  fellows  ruined  in  body  and  soul  be- 
cause they  were  not  strong  enough  to  stand  against  the 
temptation.  They  had  begun  by  sauntering  into  refresh- 
ment bars  while  waiting  for  railway  trains.  They  had 
ended  by  slinking  down  side  streets  ashamed  to  meet  one 
of  their  old  comrades,  or,  worse  still,  cringing  and  whin- 
ing for  the  loan  of  a  shilling. 

"Frank,"  she  said,  putting  her  hand  on  his  sleeve,  "re- 
member Edmund  Grattan.  He  has  got  a  golden  heart. 
He  is  a  brilliant  writer.  He  might  have  been  a  great 
and  distinguished  man.  But  his  one  weakness  drags  him 
down,  and  every  now  and  again  he  has  to  pick  himself 
tip  from  the  mire  and  try  to  build  up  a  new  self-respect. 
That  good,  brave,  generous-hearted  little  Irishman  is  a 
warning  to  all  young  journalists." 

Frank  had  not  told  Margaret  Hubbard  that  it  was 
Grattan  who  had  been  his  companion  on  the  disastrous 
night,  and  he  kept  that  part  of  the  story  to  himself.  But 
he  told  her  something  about  his  conversation  with  Cod- 
rington,  and  he  was  surprised  at  the  agitation  it  caused 
her. 

"Frank,"  she  said,  "what  is  to  be  the  end  of  it— this 
business  between  Christopher  and  Katherine?" 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  215 

Frank  was  silent.  He  had  waited  a  long  time  for  this 
moment  when  Margaret  would  tell  him  how  things  stood 
between  Katherine  and  Codrington.  He  might  have 
asked  a  hundred  times,  but  he  had  been  tongue-tied. 
Now  he  was  afraid  to  hear  the  truth. 

"I  do  not  know  the  beginning  yet,"  he  said. 

"Hasn't  Codrington  told  you?"  she  asked.  "Well,  I 
think  I  admire  him  for  that.  It  all  happened  gradually, 
and  I  think  I  was  most  to  blame.  You  see,  when  Kath- 
erine first  came  to  Fleet  Street  she  was  like  a  wild  rose, 
so  fresh  and  so  fragrant.  Chris  Codrington  fell  in  love 
with  her  at  once.  He  found  it  too  easy  to  fall  in  love. 
For  a  time  I  encouraged  him.  He  used  to  come  and  tell 
me  how  much  he  loved  her,  and  used  such  pretty  words 
and  was  so  handsome  and  ardent,  that  I,  who  have  never 
been  loved  like  that,  used  to  envy  Kitty.  You  know  how 
foolish  we  women  are!  Katherine  laughed  at  him  at 
first.  She  used  to  think  it  very  funny  and  quite  nice  to 
have  such  a  tall,  handsome  young  man  as  a  cavalier.  I 
must  say  Chris  Codrington  played  the  game  very  gallantly. 
He  spent  quite  a  lot  of  money  on  theatre  tickets  and 
outings  up  the  river,  and  excursions  to  Richmond  Park, 
and  so  on.  One  day  I  found  Katherine  sitting  on  the 
floor  with  her  head  on  the  cushions  of  that  chair  cry- 
ing her  heart  out.  Then  I  knew  that  something  had  hap- 
pened. She  said  that  Chris  had  kissed  her  in  a  hansom 
cab,  and  that  she  had  promised  to  be  his  wife.  For  a 
moment  my  heart  leaped  up.  I  was  so  glad  that  Kitty 
was  not  going  to  grow  old  alone.  But  when  I  saw  she 
was  crying  I  wondered,  and  became  rather  troubled. 
Then  she  confessed  that  she  did  not  love  Christopher  a 
Bit,  that  she  only  thought  it  good  fun  to  have  him  as  a 
friend,  and  that  she  would  never  marry  a  poor  man,  and 
live  at  Brixton,  and  have  babies,  and  become  a  drudge 


216          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

for  a  journalist  husband  who  stayed  out  late  at  night. 
She  would  rather  die." 

Margaret  smiled  at  the  recollection,  in  spite  of  her 
anxiety  for  the  girl  whom  she  had  mothered  so  long. 

"You  know  our  Katherine.  She  talks  with  the  candor 
of  a  child  sometimes — even  now — but  then  she  was 
younger." 

Margaret  had  asked  her  why  she  had  not  told  all  that 
to  Codrington  and  she  said  she  had,  and  he  had  behaved 
in  such  a  gentlemanly  way  that  she  began  to  think  she 
did  love  him  a  little  bit  after  all.  He  said  that  he  was  in 
no  hurry  to  marry,  and  that  he  quite  agreed  with  her 
as  to  the  horror  of  married  life  on  a  small  income  in  the 
suburbs.  All  he  wanted  was  her  promise  to  wait  for 
him.  He  was  going  to  write  a  big  novel,  and  when  that 
came  out  he  was  going  to  leave  Fleet  Street  and  take  a 
country  house  and  live  like  a  gentleman.  He  was  quite 
sure  that  he  could  make  a  success  as  a  novelist  and  beat 
Hall  Caine  and  Marie  Corelli  out  of  the  field.  Would 
she  wait  for  him  and  inspire  him  by  the  thought  of  her 
love,  or  would  she  break  his  heart  and  make  it  impos- 
sible for  him  to  fulfill  his  ambition?  Katherine  was 
touched.  She  had  not  the  heart  to  ruin  this  great  lit- 
erary career,  and  blight  a  sensitive  spirit.  So  they  had 
remained  engaged  for  eighteen  months. 

"How  about  the  novel?"  said  Frank.  He  spoke  quite 
calmly,  but  he  knew  that  later  he  would  suffer  in  remem- 
bering this  story.  It  would  make  the  world  go  very  grey 
for  him. 

"Oh,  it  came  out,"  said  Margaret.  "It  was  not  a  suc- 
cess financially,  but  most  of  the  critics  praised  it." 

"And  what  is  the  state  of  affairs  now — I  mean  between 
Katherine  and  Codrington?" 

Margaret  was  thoughtful. 

"I  hardly  know,"  she  said  presently.     "If  I  ask  Kitty 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  217 

to  break  off  the  engagement  she  says,  'Why  should  I? 
We  are  good  chums/  If  I  ask  her  when  I  am  to  buy 
the  wedding  cake  she  says,  "I  am  never  going  to  marry 
a  journalist  and  a  poor  man,  little  mother/  Lately  she 
has  become  rather  fretful,  rather  bitter  sometimes.  I 
think  she  sees  that  the  day  may  come  when  she  is  no 
longer  young,  and  when  Codrington  is  still  a  journalist 
and  a  poor  man,  or  when  a  middle-aged  marriage  would 
be  rather  prosaic  and  joyless/' 

"I  am  sorry,"  said  Frank.     "I  am  very  sorry." 

There  was  distress  in  his  voice,  but  he  had  that  habit 
of  repressing  any  evident  signs  of  emotion,  which  belongs 
to  reserved  self-conscious  men. 

Margaret  suddenly  put  her  hand  on  Luttrell's  knee,  and 
said  in  a  breaking  voice,  "Frank,  I  would  give  a  good  deal 
to  see  Katherine  safely  married/' 

"Yes,"  said  Frank,  "yes." 

It  seemed  to  him  that  Margaret  was  making  some  direct 
appeal  to  him.  It  was  as  though  she  were  asking  for  his 
help  on  behalf  of  Katherine.  He  answered  quietly. 

"I  don't  see  what  can  be  done." 

"I  put  Katherine's  happiness  first,"  said  Margaret. 
"We  must  all  do  that.  Don't  you  think  so?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank,  "yes." 

Margaret  was  looking  at  him,  rather  anxiously  it 
seemed,  rather  searchingly.  He  avoided  those  steady 
brown  eyes,  and  taking  her  hand  put  his  lips  to  it. 

"Mother  Hubbard,"  he  said,  "you  never  think  of  your 
own  happiness.  One  of  these  days  your  knight  will 
come  riding  down  the  street  and  carry  you  off,  and  then 
we  shall  be  left  all  forlorn." 

She  laughed  in  her  quiet  way. 

"I  had  a  dream-knight  once,  like  all  women.  He  was 
something  like  you,  Frank,  with  square  shoulders,  and  a 
clean-shaven  face  and  light  brown  hair  that  curled  a 


218          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

little."  She  looked  up  at  him,  and  her  eyes  lingered  upon 
him  with  a  kind  of  smiling  wistfulness.  "Now  he  has 
vanished  into  thin  air,  and  I  know  that  I  am  one  of  the 
old  maids  of  life." 

She  sighed  and  then  rose  and  stirred  the  fire  into  the 
flames  vigorously,  determinedly. 

"How's  that  for  a  blaze?  A  single  woman  can  get  a 
good  deal  of  fun  out  of  the  old  world,  Frank,  if  she 
keeps  a  warm  fire,  a  warm  heart  and  a  sense  of  humour." 

A  little  later  Edmund  Grattan  came  in,  and  the  room 
rang  with  laughter.  It  was  only  by  a  squeeze  of  the 
hand,  and  a  quiet,  humorous  glance  that  Frank  knew  he 
remembered  the  night  at  the  club.  He  was  in  good  spir- 
its, and  told  some  delightfully  droll  stories.  Frank  left 
the  flat  after  half-an-hour  of  them,  and  as  he  closed  the 
hall  door  behind  him  and  went  down  the  dark  stairs,  he 
raised  his  hand  to  a  throbbing  forehead.  He  repeated  the 
words  he  had  said  to  Margaret  Hubbard  when  she  had 
told  him  about  Codrington.  "I  am  sorry.  I  am  very 
sof ry."  They  were  feeble  words,  but  when  a  man  speaks 
to  his  own  heart  he  is  not  as  a  rule  eloquent,  nor  does  he 
use  long  and  polished  phrases.  "I  am  sorry,  very  sorry," 
said  Frank  Luttrell  to  the  little  black  kitten  which  came 
purring  up  to  him  when  he  opened  the  door  of  his  own 
rooms  at  Staple  Inn,  and  he  gave  a  queer,  melancholy 
laugh  as  he  turned  up  the  light  and  saw  on  his  table  a 
half  sheet  of  note-paper  on  which  he  had  scribbled  some 
lines  "To  a  Lady." 


CHAPTER  XII 

BRANDON,  the  murder  specialist,  went  away  to  York 
Assizes  for  a  great  trial  which  was  likely  to  last  two 
or  three  weeks.  Before  leaving  Fleet  Street  he  took  Lut- 
trell  on  one  side  and  asked  him  to  keep  a  friendly  eye  on 
Peg. 

'The  poor  girl  is  already  beginning  to  fret.  I  should 
be  deeply  grateful,  Luttrell,  if  you  could  call  on  her  now 
and  again,  to  keep  her  cheerful.  Otherwise,  I  am  afraid 

"    He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  said,  "You  know 

jvhat  I  mean." 

Frank  was  not  fascinated  by  the  commission.  He 
was  nervous  of  that  extraordinary  girl  with  the  big  eyes 
and  bow-lipped  mouth.  But  he  had  old-fashioned  no- 
tions about  friendship,  and  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to 
shirk  this  duty,  however  unpleasant  it  might  be. 

Brandon  said,  "I  know  I  may  rely  on  your  discretion. 
I  don't  want  any  of  the  boys  to  get  wind  of.  the  story. 
After  all,  my  private  life  is  my  own." 

" Why  not  tell  Margaret  Hubbard  ?"  said  Frank.  "She 
would  help  the  girl  a  good  deal." 

Brandon  flushed,  and  said — 

"No,  not  yet.  Maggie  Hubbard  is  the  most  broad- 
minded  girl  I  have  ever  met,  but  as  a  Catholic,  like  all  the 
Hubbards,  she  has  her  convictions,  from  which  she  does 
not  budge  an  inch,  and  I  am  sure  she  would  try  to  make 
me  put  Peg  away.  Perhaps  that  would  be  best  for  both 
of  us  if  I  could  get  some  good  soul  to  look  after  her, 
but  I  haven't  the  heart  to  send  the  girl  to  a  home.  You 
«x  219 


220  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

know  what  a  'home'  is !  She  would  either  pine  away  and 
die  or  run  away  and  go  to  the  bad  for  ever." 

Frank  said  no  more  about  the  matter,  but  when  Bran- 
don had  gone  he  called  several  times  at  the  flat  and  spent 
an  hour  or  two  with  Peg.  The  girl  was  grateful  to  him, 
and  he  was  struck  with  pity  at  her  mournfulness.  As 
much  to  employ  her  time  and  keep  her  from  brooding 
as  to  educate  her  in  an  elementary  way,  Brandon  had  set 
her  a  number  of  lessons,  and  Frank  found  her  doing  copy- 
book exercises  in  a  laborious  round  hand,  and  learning 
pieces  of  poetry  by  heart  in  order  to  acquire  a  correct 
pronunciation.  She  was  also  doing  some  drawings  from 
models — flower-pots,  tea-pots,  vases  and  other  common 
objects — and  Frank  saw  that  she  had  a  real  and  natural 
talent  in  this  direction.  In  addition  to  her  educational 
course — which  included  the  rules  of  English  grammar, 
and  first  lessons  in  history — she  had  plenty  of  needle- 
work to  do.  She  was  darning  a  number  of  Brandon's 
socks — it  seemed  to  Frank  that  Brandon  must  have 
bought  a  job  lot  and  deliberately  made  holes  in  them 
in  order  that  Peg  might  have  work  to  do — and  she  was 
making  six  pairs  of  pyjamas  for  him.  At  none  of  these 
tasks,  except  drawing,  did  she  show  any  aptitude.  Her 
copybooks  were  blotted  and  smudged.  It  looked  as  if 
some  of  the  blots  had  been  made  by  tears.  She  held 
her  needle  in  a  way  that  showed  to  Frank — who  had 
watched  his  mother  at  work  a  thousand  times — that  she 
was  no  good  needle-woman.  The  socks  were  cobbled  in 
a  rough  and  ready  way,  and  though  sometimes  she  kissed 
them  when  she  spoke  of  Brandon,  Frank  thought  that 
to  wear  a  pair  of  socks  darned  in  such  a  way  would  be 
a  torture  worse  than  walking  on  split  peas. 

But  the  girl  interested  him  intensely,  and  he  saw  that 
Brandon,  desiring  to  be  kind,  had  been  very  cruel  in  his 
method  of  redemption.  The  girl  was  like  a  trapped  bird, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  221 

a  wild  thing  with  a  fluttering  heart,  put  into  the  narrow 
prison  of  a  London  flat.  All  her  life  until  now  she  had 
been  at  liberty — a  liberty  without  law  of  any  kind.  From 
childhood  to  womanhood  (she  was  only  twenty-one)  she 
had  been  out  in  the  London  streets  selling  flowers — and 
other  wares.  Brandon  had  rescued  her  from  an  evil  life 
and  surroundings,  but  he  had  also  destroyed  her  liberty, 
and  that,  to  some  human  hearts,  is  the  breath  of  life. 
She  suffocated  in  this  small  flat.  Once  she  actually  beat 
her  head  against  the  wall  and  thumped  it  with  her  hands 
until  they  were  all  bruised.  Sometimes  she  felt  tempted 
to  smash  up  the  furniture  and  tear  the  curtains  to  pieces. 
Once  when  Brandon  was  away  she  did  seize  the  poker 
and  shatter  a  big  gilt  mirror  over  the  drawing-room 
mantelpiece  because  the  sight  of  her  own  face  every  time 
she  crossed  the  room  made  her  feel  quite  frenzied.  She 
had  not  meant  to  break  the  mirror.  She  had  really 
struck  at  the  reflection  of  her  own  face  with  the  big, 
melancholy  eyes,  which  seemed  to  stare  at  her  and  drag 
her  head  round  to  look  into  the  glass,  though  she  tried 
to  avoid  that  image  of  herself.  She  told  all  these  things 
simply  to  Frank  Luttrell,  as  simply  as  a  child  who  has 
been  naughty  and  looks  back  on  its  misdeeds  with  the 
kind  of  fatalistic  belief  of  childhood  that  these  things 
are  inevitable  and  beyond  its  own  control.  Frank  urged 
her  to  go  out  to  walk  in  Battersea  Park  every  day,  as  a 
duty  to  herself  and  Brandon,  and  to  go  up  to  town  and 
see  the  shops.  He  offered  even  to  take  her  to  the  theatre 
— a  half-a-crown  seat  in  the  pit  where  they  would  be  un- 
observed. But  the  girl  explained  to  him  rather  piteously 
that  she  dared  not  go  out  alone.  If  she  went  only  so  far 
as  the  pillar-box  to  post  a  letter  to  Brandon,  she  was  tor- 
mented by  the  fear  of  meeting  one  of  her  old  companions. 
Once  or  twice  she  had  gone  for  a  walk  in  the  park,  but 
all  the  time  she  thought  she  was  being  followed.  She 


222  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

heard  footsteps  behind  her.  She  fancied  she  heard  some 
one  call  out  her  name,  and  she  had  been  so  terrified  that 
she  had  hurried  swiftly  along,  until  at  the  sight  of  the 
park  gates  she  ran  like  a  hunted  thing  home  to  the  flat. 

Frank  was  perplexed.  It  would  never  do  for  the  girl 
to  remain  always  in  the  stuffy  flat,  her  only  companion 
when  Brandon  was  away  being  an  old  charwoman  who 
came  in  to  light  the  fires,  cook  the  meals,  and  clean  up. 
No  wonder  the  girl  was  getting  morbid  and  hysterical, 
and  losing  control  over  herself.  No  wonder  her  eyes 
seemed  to  be  getting  bigger,  and  her  cheek-bones  more 
prominent,  and  the  touch  of  colour  on  them  more  vivid. 
If  she  were  to  be  saved  from  an  utter  breakdown  she 
would  have  to  be  out  into  the  open  air.  Brandon  in  tak- 
ing her  away  from  her  low  companions  had  not  given 
her  others  to  take  their  place,  and  he  himself  was  away 
constantly.  Frank  was  beginning  to  feel  angry  and  bitter 
against  the  man.  Brandon  had  been  merely  selfish.  Yet 
he  had  made  himself  believe  that  he  was  doing  something 
noble  and  self-sacrificing  in  saving  this  girl  from  a  vicious 
life.  He  was  using  her  merely  as  the  victim  of  his  own 
craving  for  penance  and  redemption.  But  both  Bran- 
don's ideas  were  false.  He  was  not  saving  the  girl. 
He  was  destroying  her.  He  was  not  working  out  his 
own  salvation.  He  was  merely  substituting  one  sin  for 
another. 

Frank  sometimes  wondered  whether  Peg  had  a  real 
love  and  passion  for  the  man.  It  was  true  that  she  kissed 
his  socks,  and  spoke  of  him  in  words  of  adoration  as 
though  he  were  some  angel  of  God  who  had  stooped 
down  to  lift  her  up,  but  it  seemed  sometimes  as  if  she 
was  afraid  of  him,  and  as  if  her  reverence  were  that  of 
an  .Oriental  slave-girl  to  her  lord  and  master.  Frank 
remembered  the  scene  when  she  had  gone  down  on  her 
knees  to  Brandon  with  the  coffee-tray.  Whenever  she 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  223 

spoke  of  him  she  seemed  to  go  down,  in  spirit,  on  her 
knees.  There  was  no  sense  of  equality  between  the  man 
and  woman  in  this  unconventional  menage. 

She  asked  Frank  to  help  her  with  her  lessons,  and 
whenever  she  made  a  mistake  she  would  cry  out  in  a 
scared  way  that  Brandon  would  be  displeased  with  her 
because  she  made  such  slow  progress.  She  would  re- 
peat her  pieces  of  poetry  to  him,  and  when  at  almost 
every  word  he  would  try  to  correct  her  vowels,  or  her 
intonation,  she  would  end  by  bursting  into  tears,  and  say 
that  she  would  never  be  able  to  speak  like  a  "lidy,"  and 
it  would  be  better  for  Brandon  to  give  her  up  as  hope- 
less. She  would  never  be  worthy  of  him.  He  would 
always  be  ashamed  of  her  before  his  friends. 

Frank  soothed  her  down,  and  in  his  simple,  rather 
boyish  way,  he  made  her  laugh  and  forget  her  troubles 
for  a  while.  One  Saturday  he  induced  her  to 
go  out  with  him.  They  went  round  Battersea  Park. 
It  was  a  sunny  afternoon,  and  there  was  a  beautiful  show 
of  spring  flowers  in  the  beds — hyacinths,  daffodils  and 
crocuses  of  delicate  colour-harmonies.  Peg  was  en- 
chanted during  the  first  half-hour,  and  with  her  hand 
on  Frank's  arm  she  wandered  round  the  paths  gazing  at 
the  beauty  of  the  flowers  with  almost  hungry  eyes.  She 
told  him  how  in  "the  old  days" — they  could  not  have 
been  very  far  away — she  used  to  buy  "daffies"  like  these 
in  Covent  Garden,  and  sell  them  in  Cheapside  to  City 
gentlemen.  When  luck  was  good  she  earned  as  much  as 
two  shillings  a  day  clear  profit,  but  on  rainy  days  she 
would  sometimes  be  left  with  half  her  stock  unsold,  and 
then  she  hated  to  see  the  poor  things  wither.  They  were 
seldom  any  good  for  a  second  day  though  she  used  to 
"fake"  them  up  a  bit. 

While  they  were  walking  round  Luttrell  suddenly  felt 
Peg's  hand  grip  his  arm,  and  she  said,  "Who's  that?" 


224  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

in  a  scared  voice.  It  was  Quin,  the  dramatic  critic,  with 
a  small  boy  bowling  a  hoop  by  his  side.  He  lifted  his  hat 
to  Luttrell,  and  seemed  inclined  to  stop  and  speak. 
Peg  let  go  of  Frank's  arm  and  went  quickly  over  to  a 
flower  bed,  pretending  to  be  absorbed  in  its  beauty. 

"Hulloh,  Luttrell !"  said  Quin.  "Didn't  know  you  lived 
in  this  part  of  the  world." 

"I  don't,"  said  Frank,  "as  a  matter  of  fact."  For  the 
life  of  him  he  could  not  resist  blushing  when  Quin  looked 
across  at  Peg  in  a  quizzing  way,  and  said,  "I  see — out  for 
a  walk  with  your  best  girl." 

"Is  that  your  boy?"  said  Frank. 

It  was  a  happy  inspiration  for  changing  the  subject. 
Quin  immediately  presented  his  son,  aged  six,  and  re- 
marked in  an  aside,  that  the  boy  was  as  bright  a  little 
devil  as  the  sun  smiled  on.  "He  keeps  me  young,"  said 
Quin.  "You  have  no  idea  how  much  it  adds  to  your  life 
if  you  have  to  tell  fairy-tales  in  bed  in  the  morning,  and 
play  at  steam-engines  on  a  Saturday  afternoon,  and  drive 
imaginary  motor-cars  from  London  to  Edinburgh  on  a 
Sunday  morning.  Believe  me,  Luttrell,  art,  letters, 
drama,  and  that  sort  of  bosh  don't  add  a  ha'poth  of  joy 
to  life.  This  is  the  real  thing — domestic  happiness,  a 
small  boy  to  romp  with.  There's  nothing  like  it  in  life." 

He  looked  over  at  Peg. 

"God  bless  you !"  he  said.     "Go  and  do  likewise." 

He  went  off  humming  a  song,  hand-in-hand  with  a  lit- 
tle replica  of  himself. 

Peg  came  back  to  Frank,  and  said  she  thought  she  had 
better  be  going  home  as  there  were  so  many  people  about. 
He  persuaded  her  to  stay  a  little  longer  in  the  sunshine, 
but  her  pleasure  seemed  to  have  gone,  and  she  contin- 
ually looked  round  in  a  timid  way,  as  if  some  one  might 
be  following  them  She  referred  several  times  to  the  en- 
counter with  Quin,  and  asked  Frank  whether  he  thought 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  225 

the  man  had  noticed  anything  queer  about  her.  Frank 
reassured  her.  The  only  thing  about  her,  he  said,  was 
her  good  looks.  "You  know,  Peg,"  he  said,  "you  are  a 
very  beautiful  young  person.  Don't  you  know  that  ?" 

She  smiled.  No  daughter  of  Eve  can  resent  such 
words ;  but  tears  came  quickly  into  her  eyes  when  she  said 
that  her  good  looks,  if  she  had  any,  had  done  nothing 
but  harm  to  her. 

The  second  time  Frank  took  her  for  a  walk  he  had  a 
strange  and  painful  experience.  They  went  as  far  as 
Lambeth  Bridge  on  the  way  to  the  Tate  Gallery,  which 
Frank  thought  would  be  a  great  treat  to  her  as  she  had 
such  a  love  of  pictures.  But  they  had  been  rather  late 
in  setting  out,  and  it  was  dusk  when  they  reached  the 
bridge.  "I  am  afraid  the  Gallery  will  be  closed,"  said 
Frank,  regretfully.  But  Peg  did  not  hear  him.  She  had 
stopped  half-way  across  the  bridge,  and  was  gazing  down 
the  river  towards  Westminster  and  to  the  lights  of  Lon- 
don gleaming  along  the  river  side. 

"Oh,  my  Gord!"  she  said  in  a  kind  of  whisper. 

"What's  the  matter,  Peg?"  said  Frank. 

She  turned  round  with  a  white  face,  and  in  hysterical 
words  vowed  that  she  would  never  go  back  to  the  flat 
at  Batter  sea.  The  sight  of  the  great  city  again  was  too 
much.  It  was  not  fair  to  tempt  her  like  this.  Bad  as 
the  old  life  was  it  was  better  than  stifling  to  death  in 
four  rooms.  Brandon  despised  her.  He  only  kept  her 
out  of  pity.  She  didn't  blame  him  for  being  ashamed  of 
her  and  hiding  her  from  his  friends,  but  she  couldn't 
bear  it  any  longer.  It  was  driving  her  mad — driving  her 
to  drink. 

Frank  reasoned  with  her.  Brandon  had  not  "hidden" 
her  from  him  at  least.  He  had  not  been  ashamed  to  in- 
troduce him  to  her ;  and  were  they  not  very  good  friends  ? 


226  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Were  they  not  going  to  have  a  very  pleasant  tea  together 
at  a  bun-shop,  with  hot  muffins  and  fancy  cakes? 

The  girl  gave  a  kind  of  convulsive  shiver  and  turned 
her  head  away  from  the  lights  of  London  over  West- 
minster and  the  City.  She  put  her  hand  on  Frank's  arm 
and  said  in  a  low,  husky  voice  that  he  was  a  true  pal  to 
her,  and  he  mustn't  mind  if  she  was  "took  a  bit  queer" 
at  times. 

Frank  was  genuinely  moved  by  the  girl's  unhappy  sit- 
uation and  distress  of  mind.  He  determined  to  speak 
to  Brandon  seriously  about  her  when  he  came  back.  It 
was  obviously  impossible  that  she  could  go  on  leading  this 
life.  She  was  too  utterly  cut  off  from  all  companionship 
and  from  all  the  duties  and  stimulus  of  a  working  life. 
She  could  think  too  much  while  she  was  darning  socks 
and  sewing  up  pyjamas  and  reading  fairy-tales  in  words 
of  one  syllable.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  only  cure  for 
the  girl  would  be  to  get  her  some  employment,  some  posi- 
tion where  she  could  earn  enough  to  give  her  a  sense  of 
independence,  and,  what  was  more  essential,  a  sense  of 
self-respect.  But  what  could  she  do?  Utterly  uneducated 
it  was  difficult  to  think  of  any  position  suitable  to  her. 
She  was  hardly  the  sort  of  girl  to  recommend  as  a  nur- 
sery maid  with  the  care  of  children.  In  fact,  it  was  in- 
conceivable to  think  of  her  in  domestic  service  of  any 
kind.  Her  startling  type  of  beauty  would  scare  any 
suburban  housewife,  and  her  manner  of  speech  would 
arouse  curiosity  and  suspicions  in  the  least  imaginative 
mind.  Then,  too,  who  would  provide  her  with  a  "charac- 
ter" ?  Frank  sighed.  Peg  had  no  character  according  to 
the  definition  of  an  employment  agency. 

One  thing  he  felt  bound  to  do,  for  the  sake  of  the 
woman's  soul  which  he  could  not  abandon  to  its  own 
misery.  He  was  determined  that  until  Brandon  came 
back — and  he  had  never  longed  for  any  one's  return  so 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  227 

ardently  before — he  would  devote  as  much  of  his  time 
as  possible  to  keeping  Peg  company.  He  realised  clearly 
enough  that  she  was  grateful  beyond  words  for  his  so- 
ciety, and  if  he  could  but  steal  one  half-hour  a  day  to 
visit  her,  he  kept  her  away  from  that  terrible  temptation 
which  always  seemed  to  be  creeping  near  to  her — the 
desire  to  drink  herself  into  oblivion. 

As  it  happened  by  good  fortune — it  appeared  good 
fortune  to  him  at  the  time — he  was  not  sent  out  of  town 
during  these  weeks  upon  any  mission  which  kept  him 
away  a  night;  and  not  a  day  passed  without  his  being 
able  to  take  a  cab  from  Victoria  across  Battersea  Bridge 
to  the  block  of  mansions  where  he  knew  Peg  would  be 
listening  for  the  sound  of  wheels. 

This  disposal  of  his  leisure  hours  led  to  an  embarrass- 
ment which  threatened  to  become  of  grave  consequence 
to  his  own  happiness  and  peace  of  mind.  He  was  first 
made  aware  of  this  by  a  question  from  Katherine.  They 
were  alone  together  t>ne  morning  in  the  reporter's  room, 
for  the  first  time  since  she  had  dosed  him  with  quinine 
a  fortnight  before. 

"Frank,"  she  said,  looking  up  from  her  desk,  "will  you 
give  me  a  plain  answer  to  a  straight  question?" 

"Why,  yes,"  he  said  cheerfully.  "I  can  fairly  say  I 
have  never  funked  doing  that  with  anyone.  Ask  away." 

Katherine  swung  round  on  her  chair  a  little  so  that  her 
face  was  in  profile  to  his.  He  fancied  that  the  rose-tint 
on  her  cheek  had  deepened. 

"Why  don't  you  come  round  to  the  flat  now.  Are  you 
offended  with — us — about  anything?" 

Frank  saw  in  a  second  that  a  pit  was  being  digged  for 
him.  He  could  not  remember  having  told  a  lie  in  his  life. 
Truth  came  naturally  to  him.  And  Katherine  was  the 
last  girl  in  the  world  that  he  would  deceive  by  a  shadow 
of  dissimulation.  He  saw  whither  her  question  was  lead- 


228  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ing.  She  would  ask  him  where  he  was  spending  his  eve- 
nings, and  by  his  pledge  to  Brandon  he  was,  in  honour 
bound,  forbidden  to  reply.  What  should  he  do?  In  a 
flash  all  this  came  to  his  mind  and  he  was  panic-stricken. 

It  was  in  a  strainejd  voice  that  he  said,  "Good  lord,  no ! 
Offended !  What  afe  idea !" 

Then  the  fatal  question  came — which  he  knew  would 
come. 

"What  are  you  doing'^'with  yourself,  then,  every  eve- 
ning? Why  don't  you  colrrie  round  sometimes?  Mother 
Hubbard  is  quite  hurt  aboift  it." 

Frank  felt 'himself  go  ramer  white. 

"To  tell  you  the  truth,"  he  said — then  he  stopped,  for 
a  lie  was  trembling  on  his  lips  and  he  was  afraid  of  it. 

"Yes?"  said  Katherine. 

Frank  changed  his  sentence. 

"Mother  Hubbard  must  not  feel  hurt,"  he  said.  "I 
shall  always  be  tremendously  grateful  to  her — and  to 
you,  for  all  you  have  done  for  me." 

Katherine  laughed  irra  queer  voice. 

"That  sounds  as  if  ^ou  were  taking  a  sad  farewell  of 
us.  Are  you  never  coming  to  the  flat  again  ?" 

"I  should  rather  think  I  am,"  said  Frank.  "If  you 
will  have  me,"  he  added  with  humility. 

"If  we  will  have  you!  .  .  .  You  will  come  to-night, 
then?  Quin  will  be  there  with  some  new  songs  of  4iis." 

"I  should  love  to,"  said  Frank.  But  he  remembered 
that  he  had  promised  Peg  to  be  with  her  at  seven  if  noth- 
ing happened  to  take  him  out  late.  That  proviso  had  al- 
ways to  be  made.  "Unfortunately,  however,  I  cannot 
manage  it  this  evening." 

"To-morrow  ?"  said  Katherine. 

"Yes,  to-morrow — perhaps."  He  said  it  with  hesita- 
tion, and  went  hot  and  cold.  If  only  Brandon  had  not 
tied  his  tongue!  But  he  must  go  through  with  his  task. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  229 

He  must  not  forsake  poor  Peg,  who  was  on  the  edge  of 
a  horrible  precipice. 

"Only  perhaps  ?"  said  Katherine  reproachfully. 

Frank  twisted  uneasily  in  his  chair. 

"I  am  afraid  it  must  be  only  perhaps,"  he  said  gravely. 
"I  have  some  private  business  which  is  tying  my  hands 
just  at  present." 

"I  see,"  said  Katherine. 

He  saw  that  she  did  not  see,  and  that  she  was  hurt  or 
angry.  She  bent  over  her  desk  and  wrote  swiftly  for  a 
few  minutes.  Then  in  a  very  friendly  and  sweet  little 
voice  she  said  some  words  which  brought  the  colour  flam- 
ing to  his  face. 

"By  the  bye,  Quin  said  he  met  you  in  Battersea  Park 
last  Saturday  with  a  beautiful  girl  with  big  eyes  and  bow 
lips.  The  type  is  rather  unusual,  isn't  it?" 

"What  type?" 

"The  Burne- Jones  type." 

"Is  it?"  asked  Frank.     "Yes,  I  suppose  it  is." 

"Quin  was  very  much  struck." 

"It  is  a  pity  Quin  doesn't  mind  his  own  business,"  said 
Frank  rather  hotly.  Then  he  repented  of  his  folly,  for 
he  had  emphasised  the  very  thing  he  wanted  to  slur  over 
— the  secret  of  the  girl  with  the  Burne- Jones  face. 

It  was  Katherine's  turn  to  get  hot. 

"I  take  that  as  a  hint  that  I  am  not  minding  my  busi- 
ness," she  said.  "Pray  don't  think  that  I  am  in  the  least 
inquisitive." 

"I  don't  think  so,"  said  Frank  quietly.  "I  know  you 
will  always  have  the  kindest  heart  and  the  gift  of  com- 
radeship." 

He  spoke  the  words  so  emotionally  that  Katherine  was 
a  little  startled,  even  a  little  afraid.  Her  long  brown 
lashes  drooped  over  her  eyes  and  she  laid  a  burning  cheek 


230  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

oiyrae  hand,  as  she  leant  on  her  elbow  on  the  desk  pre- 
tending to  be  intent  on  her  work. 

"Do  you  mind  if  I  go  on  writing?"  she  said  politely,  j 
"We  both  seem  to  be  talking  foolishly  this  afternoon." 

It  was  the  telephone  that  saved  the  situation  for  Frank. 
He  sprang  to  it  alertly,  and  told  Vicary  over  the  wire  that 
he  would  go  upstairs  at  once.  He  was  sent  off  to  White- 
chapel  to  describe  a  social  "at-Home"  at  Toynbee  Hall, 
and  on  the  way  he  cursed  Quin  for  having  talked  about 
Peg.  He  saw  quite  clearly  that  Katherine's  suspicions 
were  aroused.  Perhaps  she  and  Mother  Hubbard — he 
put  the  thought  away  from  him  as  a  painful  thing,  but 
there  was  a  scared  look  on  his  face  when  he  thought  that 
it  would  be  impossible  to  explain  how  and  where  he  spent  ' 
his  evenings.  What  did  not  occur  to  him,  having  a  boy- 
ish and  simple  mind  unused  to  the  subtleties  of  woman- 
hood, was  that  Katherine  Halstead  revealed  a  trace  of 
jealousy  in  her  reference  to  the  girl  in  the  park.  A  man 
with  more  experience  might  have  found  a  little  comfort 
in  that.  But  Frank  was  horribly  uncomfortable  and  felt 
that  both  Katherine  and  Margaret  had  a  right  to  be  of- 
fended with  him,  as  undoubtedly  they  were.  Curiously 
enough  also,  he  had  an  uneasy  feeling  that  he  was  doing 
something  "caddish"  and  dishonorable  in  thus  hiding  his 
movements  from  two  women  who  had  admitted  him  into 
the  delightful  sanctuary  of  their  rooms.  Like  all  truth- 
ful and  simple  men,  he  felt  that  secrecy  was  an  unnatural 
thing. 

To  his  deep  annoyance  and  embarrassment,  he  found 
on  the  following  day  that  Christopher  Codrington  had 
heard  of  the  strange  girl  whom  Quin  had  seen  walking 
with  him  on  Saturday  afternoon.  The  dramatic  critic 
seemed  to  have  exaggerated  the  appearance  of  Peg  which 
was  naturally  striking,  and  Codrington  had  a  mental 
vision  of  a  girl  with  a  swan-neck,  sapphire  eyes,  and  lips 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  231 

like  Cupid's  bow.  Codrington's  own  lips  were  curved 
into  a  slightly  satirical  smile  when  he  congratulated  Lut- 
trell  on  having  the  acquaintance  of  so  original  a  lady,  and 
then  he  used  a  phrase  which  brought  the  blood  to  Frank's 
face.  "I  am  glad/'  he  said,  "that  you  are  gaining  experi- 
ence of  life.  It  is  only  when  a  man's  pulse  has  thrilled  to 
passionate  impulses,  that  he  graduates  in  the  university  of 
letters." 

"I  wish  to  heaven  you  wouldn't  talk  sky-bosh,  Codring- 
ton,"  he  said  angrily. 

"Hush !"  said  Codrington.  "You  may  trust  to  my  dis- 
cretion. Among  men  of  honour " 

He  gave  another  of  his  pale  smiles  and  slightly  lowered 
one  eyelid. 

"Look  here,  Codrington,"  said  Frank,  "I  shall  be  much 
obliged  if  you  will  drop  the  subject." 

"Certainly,"  said  Codrington.  "Not  another  word,  my 
dear  fellow." 

Perhaps  Frank  would  have  done  well  to  realise  more 
quickly  the  danger  of  the  situation — the  danger  that  al- 
ways exists  in  unconventional  relationships  between  men 
and  women,  according  to  the  experience  of  the  world,  as 
suggested  by  Codrington's  flicker  of  an  eyelid.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  painful  scene  which  took  place  in  the  flat 
in  Battersea  Park  was  not  to  the  blame  of  a  man  who 
had  devoted  himself  unselfishly  to  the  safeguarding  of  a 
woman's  soul.  It  was  the  night  before  Brandon's  return 
home,  when  Frank  would  be  able  to  relinquish  his  ex- 
traordinary task.  He  found  Peg  in  a  state  of  more 
than  usual  nervous  excitement.  Strangely  enough  the 
thought  that  Brandon  would  be  with  her  within  twenty- 
four  hours  did  not  fire  her  with  that  joy  which  Frank 
had  expected  after  all  her  wailings  at  his  absence.  She 
was  silent  and  her  eyes  were  very  wistful,  and  as  though 
she  had  been  weeping  for  hours.  Then  she  reproached 


232  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

herself,  passionately,  for  her  own  stupidity  and  broke 
down  when  she  said  that  Brandon  would  find  no  improve- 
ment in  her,  that  she  had  done  all  her  lessons  badly,  and 
that  she  would  never  be  any  better. 

"Hush,  Peg,"  said  Frank,  "you  must  learn  a  little 
patience.  In  another  couple  of  years  you  will  be  such  an 
elegant  lady  that  I  shall  be  scared  of  you." 

She  slipped  down  on  to  the  ground  and  put  her  hands 
upon  his  knees  and  her  face  on  to  her  hands.  She  was 
crying. 

Frank  was  horribly  ill  at  ease.  He  had  never  seen  a 
woman  weep  before,  and  never  before  had  a  woman  put 
her  head  upon  his  knees. 

"Peg !  Peg !"  hz  said.  "Get  up  and  sit  in  a  chair,  and 
let  us  talk  sensibly." 

The  girl  raised  her  head,  and  still  knelt  before  him. 

"Oh,  my  Gord!     If  only  I'd  been  a  good  woman." 

"God  made  you  a  beautiful  one,  and  you  are  going  to 
be  very  good." 

She  got  up  slowly  and  rubbed  her  eyes  with  the  back 
of  her  hands,  so  that  Frank  was  reminded  of  the  coster- 
girl  whom  he  sometimes  forgot  when  looking  at  this 
strange  creature. 

She  vowed  that  so  far  from  being  good  she  felt  she  was 
going  to  be  very  wicked.  Sometimes  she  thought  the 
devil  was  in  her  heart  telling  her  to  go  to  the  bad,  whis- 
pering evil  things  in  her  ears.  She  had  not  been  troubled 
so  much  with  that  lately  until  to-night  again.  Frank  had 
been  very  kind  to  her.  She  felt  "at  home"  with  him. 
Brandon  always  made  her  feel  afraid,  he  made  her  feel 
that  he  was  a  thousand  miles  above  her,  and  that  she  was 
just  dirt  at  his  feet.  But  Frank  had  been  more  of  a  pal. 
He  talked  to  her  just  as  if  she  could  read  and  write  and 
speak  like  a  lady.  He  did  not  wince  every  time  she 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  233 

dropped  an  "h."  He  had  made  her  laugh,  and  she 
thought  laughter  was  the  best  thing  in  the  world. 

Suddenly  she  stretched  out  her  hands  to  him  and  called 
his  name  twice.  "Frank!  Frank!"  and  then  said,  "Oh, 
my  Gord !"  and  again,  "Oh,  my  Gord !" 

Frank  rose  from  his  chair.  There  was  something  in 
her  eyes  which  scared  him. 

"What  is  the  matter  ?" 

She  half  stumbled  forward  and  put  her  arm  round  his 
neck,  and  tried  to  draw  his  head  towards  her.  She  said 
she  loved  him.  She  couldn't  help  it.  She  was  a  bad 
woman,  and  she  ought  to  be  killed,  especially  after  what 
Brandon  had  done  for  her.  But  Frank  had  been  "that 
kind"  to  her  she  couldn't  bear  the  thought  of  his  going 
away,  and  not  coming  back,  now  that  Brandon  would 
be  home.  Couldn't  she  go  with  him?  She  would  work 
her  ringers  to  the  bone  for  him,  and  she  wouldn't  let 
the  devil  whisper  bad  things  in  her  ears.  If  only  he 
would  let  her  stay  with  him  and  make  her  laugh  some- 
times, she  would  keep  off  the  drink  and  be  a  good  girl. 

Frank  thrust  her  back,  almost  roughly. 

"Peg!"  he  said.  "I  am  ashamed  of  you.  How  dare 
you  talk  like  that  ?" 

She  raised  her  hand  as  though  to  ward  off  a  blow.  It 
was  the  instinctive  action  of  a  girl  who  had  been  struck 
by  brutal  men,  and  Frank's  heart  was  melted  with  a 
great  pity,  and  all  his  anger  vanished.  This  girl  had 
been  brought  out  of  the  underworld  and  she  was  not  to 
be  judged  by  the  ordinary  moral  code.  She  sank  down 
on  a  sofa  rocking  herself  to  and  fro,  moaning  piteously, 
and  uttering  incoherent  words  of  self-abasement. 

It  was  an  hour  before  Frank  could  calm  her  down  and 
make  her  laugh,  though  he  had  spoken  between  jest  and 
earnest  all  that  time.  He  did  not  go  before  she  had 
promised  not  to  say  any  more  silly  things  and  to  wait 


234  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

like  a  good  girl  for  Brandon.  On  his  side  Frank  prom- 
ised that  he  would  speak  to  Brandon  and  persuade  him 
to  put  her  into  some  position  where  she  could  earn  a  liv- 
ing, and  enjoy  liberty  without  going  back  to  the  old  ways. 

When  he  left  she  had  brightened  up,  and  at  the  door  of 
the  flat  she  bent  down  and  covered  his  hand  with  kisses. 

Frank  Luttrell  had  played  the  game  with  real  courage, 
not  less  courageously  because,  while  he  had  soothed  that 
girl  with  cheerful  and  consoling  words,  he  had  been  more 
frightened  than  ever  in  his  life  before.  When  she  had 
put  her  arm  about  his  neck  and  spoken  passionate  and 
imploring  words  to  him  he  had  gone  quite  faint  with 
fear  and  horror.  It  was  an  awful  thought  to  him  that  in 
trying  to  fulfill  a  pledge  of  friendship  with  Brandon  and 
to  save  this  girl  from  hysteria — and  worse  things — he 
had  risked  the  loss  of  honour  and  had  plunged  into  a 
melodrama  which  might  even  now  have  sensational  de- 
velopments of  a  most  unpleasant  character.  Peg's  out- 
burst of  passion  had  scorched  him.  She  had  panted  like 
some  beautiful  animal  when  she  had  put  her  arms  about 
him,  and  her  breath  had  been  hot  on  his  face.  Then  like 
a  child  she  had  quietened  down  and  cried  over  his  hands 
and  kissed  them. 

He  shuddered.  What  would  happen  if  Brandon  found 
out?  He  had  laid  himself  open  to  the  most  awful  accu- 
sation which  one  man  may  make  to  another.  Like  other 
men  who,  in  trying  to  do  good,  have  burnt  their  fingers, 
Frank  Luttrell  vowed  that  never  again  would  he  play 
the  part  of  a  philanthropist,  or  pose  as  a  doctor  of  wom- 
en's souls.  But  it  was  too  late  to  make  this  resolution 
as  far  as  Peg  was  concerned,  and  there  was  to  be  another 
chapter  to  the  story. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

LUTTRELL  had  been  on  the  Rag  six  months,  and  his 
knowledge  of  the  inner  workings  of  a  newspaper  office 
was  no  longer  limited  to  the  reporters'  room.  He  had 
breathed  the  more  rarefied  air  of  the  editorial  depart- 
ment. He  had  gone  with  hesitating  tread  into  the  pres- 
ence of  the  chief  leader-writer.  He  had  become  friendly 
with  the  literary  editor.  He  was  even  admitted  into 
the  confidence  of  the  composing-room. 

It  was  in  the  last  place  that  he  learnt  the  real  secrets 
of  this  great  machine  of  which  he  was  but  one  small 
wheel  revolving  in  a  narrow  groove.  He  had  first  intro- 
duced himself  to  those  men  in  white  aprons  when  he 
had  sneaked  upstairs  in  the  hope  of  getting  a  proof 
of  one  of  his  articles  which  he  had  written  in  a  jolting 
railway  train,  so  illegibly  that  he  knew  even  a  print- 
er's reader  would  be  baffled  by  it.  It  was  an  unconsti- 
tutional act  to  apply  for  a  proof  without  the  news-editor's 
permission,  but  the  man  from  whom  he  begged  this 
favour  with  due  humility  was  gracious. 

"I  don't  mind  obliging  a  gent  like  you,  sir,"  he  said, 
shovelling  some  snuff  into  his  nose  and  offering  it  to 
Luttrell,  who  took  a  small  pinch  and  sneezed  violently 
three  times. 

"Why  like  me?"  said  Frank. 

"Well,  I  don't  mind  saying  as  how  I  like  your  articles, 
Mr.  Luttrell.  You've  got  a  bright  touch,  and  see  things 
with  your  eyes  open." 

"It's  very  good  of  you  to  say  so,"  said  Frank,  feeling 
that  this  was  praise  from  Olympian  heights. 

235 


236          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Well,  I  dare  say  you  think  I've  no  call  to  say  so," 
said  the  friendly  comp,  "but  I  reckon  I  know  what  lit- 
erature is,  seeing  as  I  was  brought  up  on  the  Bible, 
Shakespeare,  Paradise  Lost,  and  George  R.  Sims." 

"Who  was  George  R.  Sims  ?"  asked  Frank,  feeling  that 
his  education  had  been  woefully  neglected. 

The  man  was  astounded.  "Don't  know  George  R 
Sims?  Never  read  The  Signalman's  Daughter?" 

"No,"  said  Frank. 

"Strike  me  pink!  Why  him  and  Shakespeare  are  the 
great  'umanists.  What  them  two  don't  know  about 
'uman  nature  ain't  'umanity.  I  made  sure  you'd  studied 
him.  You've  got  just  the  same  touch.  The  throb  of 
the  'eart  in  your  copy,  so  to  speak.  My  old  woman  says 
'that  young  feller  who  writes  them  descriptive  articles  is 
a  fair  cough-drop/  She  says  she  could  just  'ug  you,  sir, 
though  she's  never  set  eyes  on  you." 

"I  am  sure  I  should  be  delighted  to  hug  your  good 
lady,"  said  Luttrell  pleasantly,  "that  is,  if  you  had  no 
objection." 

The  man  chuckled  prodigiously  while  he  shovelled 
more  snuff  into  his  nose. 

"I  see  you've  got  a  sense  of  'umour,"  he  said,  while 
he  went  on  putting  the  brasses  between  lines  of  type, 
with  extraordinary  deftness.  "I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if 
you  play  cricket,  neither." 

"I  used  to,"  said  Frank,  "at  Oxford.  I  don't  get  a 
chance  now." 

"Oh,  that's  a  pity.  You  can  divide  up  the  world  in 
two  'alves.  Them  as  plays  cricket  and  them  as  don't. 
The  last  sort  are  all  blighters.  I  always  try  to  get  a 
game  of  a  Saturday  on  Camberwell  Green,  with  my  boy. 
.  .'  .  So  you've  been  to  Oxford,  'ave  you?  Ah!  I 
thought  so,  by  the  look  of  you.  You've  got  the  Oxford 


manner." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  237 

"What's  it  like  ?"  said  Frank,  genuinely  amused  by  this 
man  in  a  white  apron  who  spoke  without  the  slightest 
deference,  yet  without  any  suggestion  of  insolence  or 
over- familiarity. 

"Oh,  you  can't  define  it.  It's  a  jer-nez-say-quah,  as 
my  son  calls  it.  ...  I've  a  son  as  Article  Sixty-Eight 
in  an  elementary  school.  That  boy  would  surprise  you 
with  his  knowledge.  French  and  Latin  are  mere  play- 
things to  him." 

This  conversation  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendship 
which  was  not  without  interest  to  Frank.  Mr.  More- 
wood — the  men  always  called  each  other  "Mr.,"  though 
they  spoke  of  the  editor  as  "little  Bellamy,"  and  the  news- 
editor  as  "old  Vicary" — introduced  him  to  some  of  his 
fellow  compositors  who  were  glad  to  have  proofs  pulled 
for  him  whenever  he  wanted  them,  and  to  hold  brief  con- 
versations with  him  on  politics,  literature,  cricket,  or  the 
domestic  economy,  of  the  Rag,  while  they  worked  with 
fingers  which  seemed  bewitched.  Frank  occasionally 
stood  one  or  two  of  them  a  glass  of  beer  at  a  tavern  in 
a  side-street,  and  once  went  to  tea  with  John  Morewood 
at  Camberwell,  where  he  was  introduced  to  a  nice  mother- 
ly woman,  who  asked  anxiously  whether  he  wore  flannel 
next  to  the  skin,  and  to  the  youth  of  eighteen  whom  he 
found  to  be  an  intelligent  Cockney,  proud  of  an  education 
above  the  people  of  his  own  class,  and  very  patronising 
to  his  parents,  who  regarded  him  with  awe,  but  a  bright- 
eyed,  clean-hearted,  good-tempered  boy.  Codrington  was 
astounded  to  hear  that  Frank  had  gone  to  tea  with  a 
"comp,"  although  Codrington  himself  would  stand  at  the 
bar  any  day  with  sporting  men  not  nearly  so  respectable. 
But  he  thought  the  line  ought  to  be  drawn  somewhere 
and  he  drew  it  unswervingly  between  the  composing- 
room  and  the  second  floor. 

Frank  found  that  the  compositors  made  him  think  bet- 


238  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ter  of  the  world.  Sturdy  men,  engaged  in  a  hard  and 
unhealthy  occupation  which  reversed  the  order  of  nature 
so  that  they  slept  during  the  day  and  worked  at  night, 
men  who  had  come  from  the  north  and  south — there 
were  few  real  Cockneys  among  them — they  had  a  dig- 
nity and  a  solidity  of  character  which  inspired  him  with 
admiration.  Most  of  them  were  married  and  had  large 
families.  He  found  that  if  he  allowed  them  to  speak  of 
their  wives  and  children  he  at  once  made  them  his  firm 
and  grateful  friends.  Safeguarded  by  trade  union  rules 
they  had  a  sense  of  independence  which  gave  them  an 
independence  of  manner,  and  the  composing-room  was 
a  kind  of  free  republic  governed  by  an  elected  represent- 
ative called  the  Father  of  the  Chapel,  endowed  with  tem- 
poral and  spiritual  powers  before  which  the  mightiest 
editor  trembled.  The  men  themselves  working  at  the 
top  of  the  building  looked  down  upon  the  lower  floors 
with  editors,  reporters,  and  the  whole  staff  of  pressmen, 
like  gods  gazing  down  upon  the  little  wriggling  figures 
of  humanity  on  the  ant-heap  of  the  world.  They  took  a 
benevolent  interest  in  their  wriggling.  They  distin- 
guished one  ant  from  another.  They  sympathised  with 
their  struggles  and  strivings.  But  they  had  an  attitude 
of  sublime  detachment  from  all  this  turmoil,  knowing 
that  they  were  the  arbiters  of  fate.  If  a  reporter  failed 
with  his  copy  there  were  a  dozen  articles  in  the  rack  to 
take  its  place.  If  the  editor  were  to  be  killed  in  Fleet 
Street  the  foreman  printer  would  not  turn  a  hair.  If  a 
pestilence  were  to  sweep  through  the  editorial  depart- 
ment one  surviving  sub-editor  would  send  up  the  agency 
services  and  the  paper  would  come  out.  But  if  the 
Father  of  the  Chapel  sent  down  a  note  to  the  editor  in- 
forming him  that  the  trade  union  rules  had  been  violated 
by  a  hair's  breath,  there  would  be  the  silence  of  death 
in  the  composing-room,  and,  until  an  abject  apology  had 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  239 

been  received,  no  paper  would  see  the  light  of  day. 
They  were  the  masters  of  the  situation,  all  powerful,  and 
they  had  the  pride  of  free  men,  untouched  by  the  rest- 
lessness, the  feverishness,  the  intriguing,  the  flattery,  the 
cringing  cowardice  of  some  of  the  men  down-stairs,  who, 
without  any  trade  union  to  defend  their  rights,  were  at 
the  mercy  of  despots,  benevolent  or  otherwise,  always 
afraid  of  losing  their  jobs,  always  haunted  by  the  fear 
of  going  home  to  their  wives  and  children  with  a  month's 
notice  in  their  pocket. 

Frank  was  curiously  interested  in  the  private  lives  of 
these  "comps,"  whose  only  luxury  at  night  seemed  to  be 
the  snuff  which  they  took  in  large  quantities,  and  the  half- 
hour's  "knockoff"  at  eight-o'clock  when  they  went  out 
to  get  a  cheap  meal  and  one  pipe.  They  earned  good 
wages,  some  of  them — the  linotype  men  as  much  as  five 
pounds  a  week — but  it  did  not  seem  more  than  sufficient 
to  keep  above  the  border  line  of  poverty.  House  rent 
was  dear,  even  in  the  Battersea  Park  Road;  they  sub- 
scribed to  clubs  and  masonic  lodges  which  would  give 
something  to  the  "missus"  if  they  pegged  out ;  they  spent 
a  good  deal  on  food  and  tobacco,  and  nearly  all  of  them 
put  money  on  horses  and  "cup-ties"  or  adopted  other 
means  of  gambling. 

"What's  the  good  of  it?"  he  asked,  and  they  answered 
that  it  kept  them  alive  and  gave  them  a  bit  of  excitement. 
The  matter  seemed  to  them  past  argument.  Betting 
seemed  as  necessary  to  many  of  these  men  as  bread-and- 
butter.  On  the  other  hand,  there  were  some  who  adopted 
higher  and  less  expensive  hobbies.  One  man  was  an  ar- 
dent student  of  theology,  and  tackled  Frank  Luttrell  one 
evening  on  the  writings  of  Cardinal  Newman  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold  in  a  way  that  was  damaging  to  Luttrell's 
self-respect.  Several  of  them  were  eminent  men  on  the 
clarionet,  bass-viol,  saxophone,  and  other  instruments  of 


240  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

which  Frank  was  utterly  and  shamefully  ignorant.  An- 
other, the  pride  of  the  composing-room,  was  the  cham- 
pion amateur  pugilist  of  South  London,  and  had  knocked 
out  Jim  Crow  the  American  negro,  to  say  nothing  of  a 
news-editor  who  had  once  given  him  a  "bit  of  sauce." 

It  was  from  these  men  that  Frank  had  learnt  some  of 
the  inner  secrets  of  the  Rag.  They  confided  to  him  that 
as  a  philanthropic  institution  for  converting  "the  benight- 
ed 'eathen"  to  the  gospel  of  Nonconformist  Liberalism, 
it  was  the  most  expensive  thing  of  its  kind.  The  "ads," 
as  they  called  the  advertisements,  were  not  enough  to  pay 
the  wages  on  the  editorial  floor,  and  most  of  them  were 
paid  for  at  starvation  rates.  The  circulation  was  drop- 
ping off  steadily,  and  at  its  best  it  had  been  very  bad. 
They  didn't  think  much  of  Bellamy  as  an  editor.  He 
was  a  smart  little  fellow  with  a  genial  way,  but  he  hadn't 
got  a  brain  big  enough  for  his  job,  which  would  take  the 
wisdom  of  an  archangel  so  long  as  Liberals  were  too 
poor  to  buy  a  penny  paper  and  w'hile  the  Liberal  govern- 
ment made  every  big  business  man  quake  in  his  shoes. 
They  assured  Frank  that  all  great  advertisers  put  their 
money  into  Conservative  papers,  which  supported  prop- 
erty and  went  into  the  hands  of  the  rich.  Hairdressers' 
assistants,  Nonconformist  clergymen,  congregations  of 
dissenting  chapels,  inspired  vegetarians,  and  peace-at- 
any-price  people,  who  made  up  the  bulk  of  Liberal  read- 
ers in  London — according  to  composing-room  opinions — 
were  no  good  at  all  from  a  business  point  of  view.  "All 
the  money  is  on  the  other  side — when  it's  a  question  of 
ads,"  said  Mr.  Morewood.  "Why,  firms  that  are  spend- 
ing thousands  a  week  will  think  three  times  before  they 
give  us  a  paltry  quarter  column.  It's  a  dashed  good  thing 
for  us  that  we  'ave  a  proprietor  who  is  not  running  this 
show  as  a  financial  proposition  and  who  can  stand  the 
racket  till  all's  blue.  'E  looks  upon  it  as  'is  little  'obby, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  241 

I  understand,  and  he's  got  three  and  an  'alf  million  to  play 
about  with.  That's  more  than  enough  for  golf." 

"Supposing  he  gets  tired  of  this  hobby,"  said  Frank, 
"and  takes  to  building  free  libraries  for  other  people's 
newspapers  ?" 

"Well,  then,  Gord  'elp  us  and  our  wives  and  kids," 
said  Mr.  Morewood,  measuring  off  a  column  of  type  with 
a  piece  of  string. 

Frank's  knowledge  of  the  editorial  floor  was  due  to  a 
more  extensive  sphere  of  work.  The  Chief  had  got  rid 
of  the  young  gentleman  who  had  Belgium  on  the  brain, 
and  of  several  other  gentlemen  of  academical  distinction 
who  had  been  earning  good  salaries  in  return  for  one 
leader-note  a  night.  They  had  been  appointed  by  Bel- 
lamy's predecessor  in  the  editorial  chair,  who  had  or- 
ganised the  staff  regardless  of  expense,  with  the  propri- 
etor's full  consent.  When  Bellamy  had  first  seen  the 
salary  list  he  nearly  swooned,  and  had  to  send  out  im- 
mediately for  a  glass  of  "milk,"  which  cost  him  sixpence. 
But  there  were  wheels  within  wheels,  and  Bellamy  had  to 
move  slowly  in  his  work  of  retrenchment  and  reform. 
It  was  only  during  recent  days,  when  the  proprietor  had 
been  brooding  over  the  figures  of  the  last  financial  year, 
that  Bellamy  had  been  allowed  to  cut  off  the  heads  of  a 
number  of  men  whom  he  had  long  marked  down  as 
"weeds"  in  his  private  note-book.  To  do  him  justice  he 
destroyed  these  members  of  his  staff  with  the  utmost 
tenderness,  and  as  though  he  loved  them.  To  the  gen- 
tleman with  the  Belgian  weakness  he  said  that  he  had 
come  reluctantly  to  the  opinion  that  he  was  too  good  for 
his  position,  that  his  high  talent  deserved  a  wider  scope, 
and  that  he,  Bellamy,  felt  it  his  duty  not  to  stand  in  his 
way  of  advancement. 

"It's  very  good  of  you  to  put  it  like  that,"  said  the 
junior  leader-writer,  fingering  his  dismissal  note.  "It 


242  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

is  better  than  being  kicked  out,  but  of  course  it  comes  to 
the  same  thing,  and  won't  comfort  my  wife  who  is  ex- 
pecting a  new  baby." 

Bellamy  wrung  him  by  the  hand  heartily. 

"My  dear  fellow,  when  you  are  editor  of  the  Spectator, 
you  will  be  grateful  to  me  for  having  removed  you  from 
a  place  utterly  unsuited  to  your  abilities." 

It  was  owing  to  these  dismissals  that  Frank  found  him- 
self with  more  work  and  higher  wages.  Bellamy  took 
him  out  to  supper  one  night.  It  was  an  hour — some- 
times extending  to  nearly  two  hours — when  the  editor 
allowed  himself  a  complete  break  from  the  cares  of 
office.  It  was  also  the  hour  when  he  made  and  unmade 
favourites.  Frank  had  often  noticed  men  used  to  hang 
round  the  editor's  door  when  eight  o'clock  approached, 
like  courtiers  in  the  ante-room  of  a  king.  Some  of  them 
who  enjoyed  the  personal  favours  of  the  Chief  used  to 
be  more  forward  in  soliciting  his  company.  Quin,  for 
instance,  used  to  poke  his  head  into  the  room,  and  with 
his  whimsical  smile,  say,  "Can  I  order  you  a  salmon  steak 
this  evening,  my  lord?"  and  then  in  a  whisper  he  would 
say,  "I  have  a  remarkably  good  story  to  tell  you  this 
evening.  No  whiskers  on  it,  honour  bright.  .  .  .  Hush 
not  a  word."  If  Quin  were  doing  a  first  night,  Codring- 
ton  perhaps  would  open  the  door  of  the  editor's  room  in 
a  noiseless  way,  close  it  behind  him,  and  taking  off  his 
remarkable  hat,  stand  silent  and  elegant  before  his  Chief. 
Bellamy  would  look  up,  and  start  with  mock  alarm. 
"Have  you  come  to  borrow  money,  Codrington?  If  so, 
get  out." 

"No,  sir,  I  only  wondered  whether  I  might  join  you 
at  supper  this  evening?" 

"No,  you  may  not.  Go  and  have  supper  with  one  of 
your  concubines.  I  am  having  my  simple  meal  with  a 
man  of  strict  virtue  and  high  ideals.  Needless  to  say, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  243 

he  is  a  distinguished  Liberal  who  does  not  order  this 
paper  from  his  newsagent.  He  reads  it  free  of  charge  at 
the  club  and  has  a  huge  admiration  for  its  noble  pur- 
pose. Damn  him!" 

Frank  was  not  one  of  the  ante-chamber  courtiers,  but 
Silas  Bellamy  sent  down  word  to  him  one  evening  that 
he  would  like  his  company  for  an  hour.  Such  an  invita- 
tion was  equal  to  a  Royal  command,  and  Codrington, 
who  overheard  it  raised  his  blonde  eyebrows  and  congrat- 
ulated him.  "I  shall  be  taking  off  my  hat  to  you  as  chief 
leader-writer,  Luttrell." 

"It  is  more  likely  that  I  am  going  to  get  a  month's 
notice,"  said  Frank. 

"Well,  I  admit  that's  just  as  probable,"  said  Codring- 
ton pleasantly.  "There's  a  feeling  of  unrest  in  the  air. 
I  never  come  to  the  office  without  being  prepared  for 
my  death-warrant." 

It  was  characteristic  of  Bellamy  that  for  three-quarters 
of  an  hour  in  the  Italian  Restaurant  round  the  corner  he 
did  not  mention  the  special  purpose  of  the  interview. 
He  ordered  a  nice  little  meal  for  Luttrell  and  shared  a 
bottle  of  Burgundy  with  him,  and  talked  pleasantly  and 
quite  amusingly  of  his  experiences  in  many  parts  of  the 
world.  He  was  especially  proud  of  his  career  as  relig- 
ious editor  on  the  Chicago  Angel  when  he  smelt  ouiE 
heresy  in  many  different  congregations  and  worked  up 
sensational  copy,  when  the  heretics  obtained  writs  for  libel 
or  resisted  the  authority  of  their  elders,  bishops,  or  ec- 
clesiastical bodies. 

At  the  tooth-pick  stage  of  the  meal  Bellamy  said  in  a 
casual  way — 

"What  would  you  think  if  I  doubled  your  salary,  Lut- 
trell?" 

"I  should  think  you  were  joking,"  said  Frank,  after 


244  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

a  sufficient  pause  to  study  the  idea  in  its  different  and  al- 
luring aspects. 

Bellamy  seemed  pleased  with  the  answer  and  laughed 
in  his  throat. 

"Well,  just  as  you  like,"  he  said.  "You  needn't  accept 
my  offer  if  you  don't  care  for  it.  ...  The  truth  is  you 
have  been  doing  pretty  good  work,  Luttrell,  and  I  believe 
you  could  do  better.  Anyhow,  I  am  going  to  make  you 
do  more.  I  am  going  to  introduce  you  to  our  chief 
leader-writer — ever  met  him  ?  He's  worth  knowing  as  a 
type  of  the  high-souled,  academical,  un journalistic  gen- 
tleman— and  you'll  have  to  write  a  leader-note  for  him 
when  you're  not  out  late  or  away  on  one  of  Vicary's  cod 
news  stories.  I  am  also  going  to  introduce  you  to  our 
literary  editor — he's  another  pretty  specimen:  he  would 
like  to  abolish  news  altogether  and  give  nothing  but  lit- 
erary articles  by  long-haired  gents  who  have  a  stupendous 
reputation  at  Tooting  Bee,  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea,  and 
Slocumb-in-the-Mud.  You'll  have  to  fill  up  your  time 
by  doing  reviews  for  him.  That's  why  I  am  going  to 
raise  your  salary." 

Luttrell  began  to  thank  him  with  an  emotion  that 
gripped  his  throat,  but  Bellamy  cut  him  short. 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  but  sweating.  I  wouldn't  put  it  to 
you  myself,  but  the  proprietor  is  all  for  cutting  down 
expenses,  and  as  I'm  handling  his  money  I  have  to  work 
out  his  ideas — when  he  has  any — don't  you  know.  Have 
you  ever  struck  the  proprietor  ?  He  ought  to  be  put  into 
a  poem.'* 

He  was  thoughtful  for  a  moment,  with  a  whimsical 
smile,  as  he  pulled  his  little  chestnut  moustache.  Then 
he  returned  to  the  subject  of  Luttrell's  salary. 

"Look  here,  don't  you  go  buying  motor-cars  or  taking 
Gaiety  girls  out  to  tea.  There's  no  knowing  if  I  shan't 
have  to  give  you  the  sack  in  another  week  or  two." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  245 

He  laughed  and  then  shook  hands  with  Frank  and  said, 
"I  like  your  stuff,  Luttrell.  You're  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman,  don't  you  know,  and  all  that." 

Frank  did  not  know  how  far  he  was  to  take  the  editor 
seriously.  He  even  doubted  whether  the  doubling  of  his 
salary  was  anything  more  than  a  jest.  Men  are  not  in 
the  habit  of  expecting  miracles  nowadays,  and  Frank, 
who  had  written  himself  down  as  an  arrant  failure, 
would  really  have  taken  his  dismissal  without  a  thought 
of  being  unjustly  treated.  For  a  little  while  after  he  had 
left  Bellamy  he  was  tempted  to  do  wild  things,  to  burst 
into  the  reporters'  room  with  the  great  news,  to  go  over 
to  the  club  and  stand  endless  whisky-and-sodas  to  men 

!  who  could  take  them  endlessly,  to  go  and  shed  tears  of 
joy  on  Mother  Hubbard's  shoulder,  or  to  go  and  implore 
Katherine  to  kiss  him  once,  whatever  Codrington  might 

[say.  But  he  did  none  of  these  things  and  gradually 
cooled  down  to  a  normal  temperature,  reflecting  that  he 

>; would  look  a  pretty  fool  if  Bellamy  had  only  been  in- 
dulging in  badinage.  He  decided  to  say  nothing  about 

•the  rise,  imaginary  or  real,  to  any  of  his  colleagues,  until 
it  was  put  to  the  test  on  the  following  Friday  at  the 
cashier's  desk. 

That  Bellamy  had  been  serious  up  to  a  point  was 

proved  when  he  duly  introduced  Luttrell  to  the  chief 

[leader-writer  and  the  literary  editor,  leaving  him  in  their 

Jhands  after  a  few  jesting  words. 

Luttrell  had  often  seen  the  tall  man  with  the  iron-grey 

pair  and  the  long,  ascetic  face  who,  day  by  day,  or  rather 

bight  by  night,  gave  expression  to  the  clear  and  rather 

told  voice  of  intellectual  Liberalism.  He  had  seen  him 
coming  out  of  the  editor's  room,  slightly  flushed,  and 

(smiling  in  a  half -amused,  half -contemptuous  way.  He 
|iad  seen  him  sitting  in  his  own  room  with  Blue  Books 
n  front  of  him,  the  table  and  floor  littered  with  morning 


246  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

and  evening  papers,  his  iron-grey  hair  disordered,  and  his 
hatchet-like  face  bending  over  the  desk  as  he  wrote  page 
after  page  of  manuscript  in  a  fine,  crabbed,  scholarly 
hand  which  was  the  horror  of  the  linotype  men  upstairs. 
He  had  read  morning  after  morning  those  clear,  polished, 
faultless  phrases  in  which  he  reproved  European  mon- 
archs  for  indiscretions,  ridiculed  Conservative  orators  in 
an  ironical  vein  which  was  never  violent  and  seldom  bit- 
ter, gave  additional  weight  to  the  somewhat  ponderous 
arguments  of  Liberal  politicians,  upheld  the  old  Glad- 
stonian  ideals  without  the  Gladstonian  fire  and  emotion, 
and  went  back  repeatedly  to  first  principles  of  political, 
social  and  ethical  philosophy  in  dealing  with  the  facts  and 
problems  and  tendencies  of  modern  life. 

Frank  found  Henry  Bathhurst  to  be  a  man  of  highly- 
strung  nervous  temperament,  with  a  strain  of  intellectual 
arrogance  and  impatience  which  had  a  rather  paralysing 
effect  on  those  with  whom  he  came  in  touch.  The  truth 
was,  as  Frank  discovered  upon  closer  acquaintance,  that 
the  man  was  hopelessly  ill  at  ease  in  the  turmoil  of  a 
newspaper  office.  He  had  been  a  don  at  Cambridge, 
where  his  text-books  on  political  economy  had  been  re- 
ceived as  the  new  gospel.  Among  his  fellow-professors 
he  had  been  known  as  a  man  of  singularly  high  and 
noble  character,  unsullied  by  any  mean  qualities,  and  il- 
luminated by  a  keen  and  kindly  wit.  In  that  atmosphere 
of  scholarship,  of  moral  and  mental  exclusiveness  into 
which  the  vulgarities  and  squalor  of  life  did  not  enter, 
Henry  Bathurst  breathed  naturally.  But  when  he  ex- 
changed the  society  of  professors  for  that  of  pressmen  in 
obedience  to  an  impulse  which  bade  him  put  his  political 
economy  to  the  test  of  practical  problems,  he  found  him- 
self in  a  new  world  of  beings  with  whom  he  had  but  little 
sympathy  and  who  bewildered  him  continually.  Silas 
Bellamy,  his  editor,  amused  him  sometimes,  irritated  him 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  247 

constantly,  and  was  always  a  mystery  to  him.  He  could 
not  understand  his  flippancy,  his  apparent  indifference 
to  all  the  great  ideals  of  Liberalism,  his  evident  light- 
heartedness  in  the  face  of  Liberal  defeats.  When  Henry 
Bathhurst  went  into  his  room  to  discuss  some  momen- 
tous question  of  policy,  Bellamy  would  polish  his  nails, 
play  with  a  bayonet  on  his  desk,  and  after  listening  for 
five  minutes  with  a  queer  little  smile  under  his  moustache 
would  look  up  and  say,  "I  have  no  doubt  you're  right, 
Bathhurst,  I  cannot  imagine  you  ever  being  wrong.  But, 
of  course,  politics  never  gave  us  any  circulation  and 
never  will.  It's  news  that  people  want,  and  a  few  light 
articles  to  keep  them  cheerful." 

The  only  time  when  the  editor  exercised  his  preroga- 
tive of  criticism  and  veto  was  when  Henry  Bathhurst  hit 
any  party  too  hard  or  used  his  gift  of  irony  as  a  rapier. 
Then  Bellamy  would  in  his  whimsical  way  protest  against 
this  ill-usage  of  harmless  people  who  no  doubt  had  their 
use  in  the  world,  and  bought  the  necessities  and  luxuries 
of  life  which  created  advertisements  for  the  maintenance 
of  newspapers.  He  admitted  that  in  all  probability  ad- 
vertisements were  an  eye-sore  to  the  chaste  eyes  of  a 
Cambridge  professor,  but  unless  they  were  admitted  to 
the  paper  Bathhurst  would  have  no  means  of  raising 
the  ideals  of  the  people,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
paper  would  cease  to  exist. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say,  then,"  said  Henry  Bathhurst, 
"that  I  have  got  to  be  dishonest  in  order  that  some  low 
creature  with  Tory  prejudices  may  be  induced  to  pay  for 
half-a-column  of  Bilious  Beans  in  black  type?" 

"Dishonesty,"  said  Bellamy,  stroking  his  fair  mous- 
tache, "is  unknown  in  a  newspaper  office.  Diplomacy  is 
a  better  word  and  hurts  nobody's  feelings." 

After  such  conversations  as  this  Henry  Bathhurst 
would  go  back  to  his  room  and  fling  himself  down  in  his 


248          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

chair  with  a  burst  of  laughter  in  which  there  was  no 
mirth. 

"The  whole  thing  is  sordid  and  squalid/'  he  said  one 
night  to  Luttrell  who  had  come  to  get  instructions  for  a 
"leader-note."  "To  a  man  of  honour  it  is  an  intolerable 
situation." 

Once  he  poured  forth  the  vials  of  his  wrath  upon  all 
pressmen.  They  were  ignorant,  vulgar,  coarse  and  stupid. 
They  were  false  to  every  ethical  ideal.  They  were  board- 
school  boys  invested  with  terrible  power.  He  had  come 
to  the  conviction  that  a  journalist  could  not  be  a  gentle- 
man. They  might  have  been  gentlemen  once,  and  they 
might  retain  certain  superficial  traces  of  gentility,  but  at 
the  heart  of  them  they  were  mostly  rotten. 

"When  I  see  these  sinister  people  walking  about  the 
office,"  he  said,  "these  so-called  business  men  who  control 
the  machine,  these  men  with  Yankee  ideals,  I  despair  of 
the  future  of  the  country." 

Luttrell,  who  knew  more  about  the  personalities  in  the 
office  and  of  journalists  in  other  offices — for  Henry  Bath- 
hurst  held  himself  aloof  and  remained  in  the  seclusion 
of  his  own  room — did  not  entirely  agree  with  this  sweep- 
ing condemnation.  He,  more  than  Bathhurst,  had  been 
broken  on  the  wheel  of  the  machine :  more  sensitive  even 
than  the  man  of  academical  training,  he  had  suffered  the 
tortures  of  a  shy  spirit  in  the  rough  crowd.  Henry  Bath- 
hurst  after  all  had  never  gone  out  into  the  streets  to  seek 
interviews  with  snobs,  to  flatter  flunkeys,  to  be  insulted 
by  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  who,  like  Bathhurst, 
the  Cambridge  professor,  did  not  think  that  a  journalist 
could  be  a  gentleman.  He  was  a  descriptive  reporter  at 
the  call  of  a  news-editor,  and  he  saw  the  worst  side  of 
Fleet  Street.  But  in  fairness  to  Frank  LuttrelFs  breadth 
of  mind  it  must  be  said  that  he  saw  more  to  admire  than 
to  blame.  He  had  marvelled  often  at  the  gaiety  with 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  249 

which  those  men  faced  their  daily  life  and  at  the  courage 
with  which  they  took  the  ups  and  downs  of  a  switchback 
career.  He  knew  that  Bathhurst  himself  was  regarded 
with  somewhat  contemptuous  amusement  by  his  col- 
leagues on  lower  planes  of  the  journalistic  ladder.  When 
they  passed  judgment  on  him  briefly  as  an  "academical 
gent"  they  expressed  a  truth  which  Frank,  who  was  also 
a  'Varsity  man,  had  not  been  slow  in  admitting.  It  was 
true  that  they  could  not  all  read  read  J^schylus  in  the 
original  or  quote  the  satires  of  Juvenal,  but  they  saw  day 
by  day  greater  tragedies  than  those  conceived  by  Greek 
poets,  and  went  behind  the  scenes  of  that  come  die  hu- 
mame,  in  which  Juvenal  had  learnt  his  knowledge  of 
manners  and  men. 

The  literary  editor  to  whom  Luttrell  went,  with  his 
usual  nervousness  and  diffidence,  was  a  different  type  of 
man  from  Henry  Bathhurst.  When  Luttrell  first  tapped 
at  his  door  and  went  in,  he  saw  a  young,  anaemic-looking 
man  with  fair  wavy  hair  going  a  little  grey  and  a  pale, 
haggard,  clean-shaven  face,  seated,  with  his  elbows  on  the 
desk,  a  novel  opened  before  him  and  six  other  novels  in 
a  pile  at  his  elbow.  He  was  smoking  a  cigarette,  and 
the  third  finger  of  his  left  hand  was  deeply  stained  with 
nicotine.  As  Luttrell  entered  he  groaned  slightly,  and 
pushed  back  a  lock  of  his  fair  hair  from  his  forehead. 
Then  he  swung  round  in  his  chair,  and  said  in  a  nervous 
way,  "You're  Luttrell,  aren't  you?  The  Chief  spoke  to 
me  about  you.  He  says  you  are  going  to  do  a  review  now; 
and  again." 

"If  I  may,"  said  Luttrell.  "I  have  had  very  little  ex- 
perience except  at  Oxford,  where  I  used  to  do  books  for 
the  mag." 

Percival  Phillimore  pointed  to  the  novels. 

"If  you  could  do  some  of  them  in  your  spare  time  I 
should  be  grateful.  But  I  warn  you  it  is  the  most  soul- 


250          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

destroying  work  in  the  world.  I  have  reviewed  a  hundred 
and  fifty  novels  this  year,  and  my  brain  has  gone  to  pulp. 
Nine- tenths  of  them  are  utterly  bad,  the  others  are  just 
endurable.  But  one  loses  all  sense  of  proportion.  When 
one  reads  a  novel  that  does  not  violate  every  rule  of 
grammar  and  contains  just  a  few  traces  of  good  sense 
and  good  feeling,  one  is  apt  to  hail  it  as  a  work  of  genius. 
The  worst  of  it  is  we  can't  afford  to  tell  the  truth  about 
the  bad  ones.  The  only  justification  of  a  literary  page  in 
a  newspaper  is  the  publishers'  advertisements,  so  that  we 
can't  be  too  severe.  Besides,  the  public  would  not  read 
columns  of  adverse  criticism.  A  review  must  always  err 
on  the  side  of  kindness,  and  find  excuse  for  the  worst  of 
literary  charlatans." 

Luttrell  was  drawn  towards  this  man  who  called  him- 
self literary  editor,  and  wrote  most  of  the  reviews  of  his 
own  page.  Although  he  looked  under  thirty  he  had  been 
on  every  rung  of  the  journalistic  ladder,  and  on  most  of 
the  London  papers.  It  appeared  that  he  was  married  and 
had  a  beautiful  wife  in  the  suburbs,  and  three  young 
children  to  whom  he  told  fairy-tales  in  bed  every  morn- 
ing. He  had  written  several  big  books  on  history,  and 
innumerable  essays  and  articles;  and  a  life  of  incessant 
literary  labour,  from  early  morning  until  late  at  night, 
had  made  him  a  man  of  delicate  health  and  overwrought 
nerves.  He  had  had  repeated  struggles  with  poverty,  and 
this  had  made  him  anxious  and  melancholy,  but  under- 
neath that  melancholy  there  was  a  gleam  of  spiritual 
sunshine,  and  he  had  tenderness  of  character  which  gave 
him  an  almost  feminine  sensibility. 

Though  Frank  Luttrell  did  not  know  it,  Percival  Philli- 
more  was  curiously  like  himself  in  many  ways.  It  was  as 
though  Luttrell  were  face  to  face  with  his  own  person- 
ality after  Fleet  Street  had  done  its  worst  with  him,  and 
when  disappointment,  failure,  toil,  long  hours,  and  mental 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  251 

strain  and  stress  had  left  him  physically  enfeebled  and 
weary  in  spirit.  If  ever  such  a  thought  had  sprung  into 
Luttrell's  mind  it  would  have  come  to  him  as  a  shock, 
for  although  he  spent  many  pleasant  minutes  in  Philli- 
more's  room,  talking  "literature,"  telling  his  adventures, 
and  rinding  some  rest  fulness  in  the  presence  of  this  tired, 
shy,  and  sympathetic  man,  he  always  pitied  him  as  he 
pitied  any  weak  and  forlorn  creature  who  had  been 
wrecked  on  the  shore  of  life. 

But  Luttrell  at  this  time,  and  for  the  first  time  during 
his  career  in  Fleet  Street,  was  hopeful  and  elated.  When 
the  first  Friday  came  round  after  his  supper  with  Bellamy 
he  received  a  cheque  for  nine  guineas.  So  it  was  true! 
He  was  a  man  of  means — of  almost  inconceivable  wealth! 
On  four  pounds  ten  a  week  he  had  paid  his  way,  by  care- 
ful management,  leaving  himself  a  margin  for  small 
luxuries.  On  nine  guineas  he  would  not  know  what  to 
do  with  his  money.  That  was  what  he  thought  while 
standing  at  the  cashier's  desk  fingering  the  bit  of  pink 
paper  which  was  a  document  standing  for  more  than  gold 
— a  diploma  of  merit,  an  acknowledgment  of  hard  service 
on  behalf  of  the  Rag,  a  reward  for  insults  and  absurdi- 
ties, and  loss  of  self-respect,  and  mental  irritation,  and 
hours  of  futile  work,  and  articles  never  published,  and 
articles  chopped  down,  and  nights  of  dreadful  doubt,  and 
mornings  of  blank  pessimism,  and  days  of  infinite  fatigue. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

IT  happened  that  a  Bourbon  princess  was  to  be  mar- 
ried to  a  Bourbon  prince,  and — by  a  chain  of  facts  that 
began  in  the  year  1789  when  a  pale  young  man  with  long 
hair  and  black  eyes  jumped  on  to  a  table  outside  the 
Palais  Royal  in  Paris  and  shouted  "Aux  armes!"  to  a 
mob  of  butchers,  clerks,  lawyers,  and  market-women — it 
appeared  that  the  marriage  was  to  take  place  in  the  heart 
of  Worcestershire.  It  seems  curious  that  the  downfall  of 
the  Bastille,  followed  by  the  march  on  Versailles,  the  sack 
of  the  Tuileries,  the  escape  to  Varennes  and  the  execution 
of  Louis  Capet,  should  have  any  influence  upon  the  life 
of  a  young  journalist  named  Francis  Luttrell,  a  century 
and  a  half  later,  but  it  seems  curious  only  because  men 
do  not  understand  how  their  lives  have  already  been  in 
some  measure  fashioned  for  them  in  the  womb  of  Time, 
and  how  many  of  their  actions  and  adventures  have  been 
made  possible  by  the  deeds  of  men  and  women  whose 
bones  have  long  been  mouldering  in  the  grave  or  scattered 
among  the  motes  which  dance  in  the  sunbeam.  If  Louis 
XVI.  had  not  been  fat  and  somnolent  after  dinner,  and 
ruled  by  a  woman  with  a  stronger  will;  even  if  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau  had  not  written  a  book  which  was  read 
by  young  blacksmiths  by  the  light  of  their  forge,  and  by 
poor  Parisian  clerks  in  their  fireless  lodgings,  or  by  men 
and  women  with  wit  beneath  their  powdered  wigs ;  or  if 
Madame  de  Warens  had  not  been  the  "cher  maman"  of 
the  loutish  young  man  in  whose  brain  was  conceived  the 
contrat  social,  or  if — a  thousand  things  going  back  down 
the  dim  vistas  of  history  haunted  by  millions  of  unknown 

252 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          253 

ghosts — the  joy-bells  would  not  have  rung  for  a  Bourbon 
princess  at  her  marriage  in  a  Worcestershire  farm-house, 
and  Francis  Luttrell  would  not  have  been  what  now  he  is^ 

There  was  another  chain  of  events  much  too  tedious  to* 
follow  out,  but  quite  independently,  leading  to  the  strange 
connection  between  the  journalist  and  the  French  Revo- 
lution. For  if  Queen  Elizabeth  had  not  been  fond  of 
pinching  the  ears — and  sometimes  slapping  the  faces — of 
handsome  young  men  who  pretended  to  be  in  love  with 
her,  it  is  quite  certain  that  Christopher  Codrington  would 
not  have  been  sent  off  to  describe  a  pastoral  play  at  Sher- 
borne  which  was  given  by  the  great  Queen  to  young 
Walter  Raleigh.  And  if  Codrington  had  not  gone  to 
Sherborne  he  would  certainly  have  gone  to  the  Bourbon 
wedding  in  Worcestershire,  and  Francis  Luttrell  would 
probably,  on  that  day,  have  eaten  a  mutton  chop  in  a 
Fleet  Street  restaurant,  without  having  his  fate  linked 
up  with  the  ancien  regime  of  France,  so  strangely  do 
things  come  about. 

Vicary,  the  news-editor,  was  the  instrument  of  Fate. 
He  called  Luttrell  into  his  room  one  afternoon  and  told 
him  that  he  was  to  get  away  next  morning  to  a  Worces- 
tershire town  where  once  a  great  battle  was  fought. 
Vicary  did  not  mention  the  battle,  but  Frank,  who  used 
to  read  history,  remembered  it.  "We  haven't  a  ticket," 
said  Vicary,  "and  what  you  have  got  to  do  when  you  are 
on  the  ground  is  to  lay  your  hands  on  two." 

"Why  two?"  asked  Luttrell. 

"Because  I  tell  you  so,"  said  Vicary  amiably,  "and,  if 
you  want  to  know  more  on  the  subject,  because  Miss 
Katherine  Halstead  is  going  with  you  to  describe  the 
frocks.  Any  objection?" 

Frank  controlled  his  emotion  admirably,  and  said, 
"None  whatever,"  just  as  he  might  have  done  if  a  man 
in  the  corner  seat  of  a  railway  carriage  had  asked  whether 


254  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

he  had  any  objection  to  the  window  being  shut.  But 
Vicary's  words  had  opened  the  window  of  his  imagina- 
tion, and  he  saw  a  delightful  vision  of  a  gay  adventure 
with  Katherine  as  his  comrade. 

Vicary  gave  one  of  his  prodigious  winks.  He  winked 
with  one  whole  side  of  his  face. 

"I  thought  you  wouldn't  mind.  Katherine  is  a  charm- 
ing girl ;  I  hope  you  will  behave  discreetly  and  look  after 
her  carefully." 

"Miss  Halstead  is  quite  able  to  look  after  herself,"  said 
Mr.  Frank  Luttrell,  with  a  rather  steely  look  in  his  grey- 
blue  eyes. 

Vicary  was  amused,  and  when  he  was  amused  he  had  a 
habit  of  twisting  his  body,  and  laughing  behind  a  big  fist. 

"Oh,  oh !    There's  a  nasty  east  wind  in  here  1" 

Then  he  became  business-like  and  told  Luttrell  in  his 
abrupt  way  that  it  was  a  good  story,  and  he  ought  to  be 
jolly  glad  to  get  on  to  it — and  he  must  write  a  prepara- 
tory article  describing  who  the  Bourbons  were  when  they 
were  at  home,  and  who  was  going  to  be  married  to  whom, 
and  above  all  things  he  was  to  get  two  tickets  for  the  wed- 
ding on  the  following  day,  and  put  his  stuff  on  to  the 
wires  before  they  were  bunged  up  with  messages  to  all 
the  papers  in  Europe  and  the  village  of  London. 

Frank  met  Katherine  in  the  passage.  He  had  been  to 
the  flat  again  for  three  evenings,  and  she  had  forgotten 
the  mysterious  girl  of  Battersea  Park,  or,  if  she  remem- 
bered, she  had  forgiven  him,  and  asked  no  more  ques- 
tions. 

She  had  already  heard  the  news,  and  greeted  him  in  the 
passage  with  an  excited  pleasure  which  she  did  not  at- 
tempt to  conceal. 

"How  splendid !  There  will  be  some  wonderful  frocks, 
and  they  say  the  princess's  wedding  gown  is  beyond  the 
dreams  of  women." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  255 

"I  suppose  as  far  as  I  am  concerned  it  will  mean  top 
hat  and  frock  coat?"  said  Frank,  talking  in  the  leisurely 
way  which  all  Englishmen  affect  when  they  want  to  hide 
their  feelings. 

"And  lavender  gloves,  if  you  please,  and  a  silver- 
knobbed  stick.  You  must  look  your  very  bestest  best. 
We  are  going  to  rub  shoulders  with  the  crowned  heads 
of  Europe,  and  all  sorts  of  queer,  disreputable  people  in 
their  Sunday  clothes." 

Frank  promised  humbly  to  try  and  look  the  part  of  a 
potentate,  but  he  was  quite  sure  that  his  disguise  would  be 
imperfect. 

Katherine  tipped  up  her  face  a  little  and  studied  him 
with  critical  eyes  as  he  leant  against  the  passage  wall. 

"I  am  quite  sure  you  will  be  mistaken  for  a  prince." 

"It  is  a  doubtful  compliment,"  said  Frank,  who  had 
seen  some  princes  since  he  had  been  a  journalist. 

"Prince  Charming,"  said  Katherine.  "One  of  the  fairy- 
book  kind,  and  I  will  be  your  princess,  that  is  if  your 
Royal  Highness  will  stoop  to  so  poor  a  beggar-maid." 

There  was  a  roguish  look  on  her  face,  yet  something 
more  or  less  than  roguishness  in  the  smile  with  which 
she  said  these  words.  It  was  as  though  she  had  discov- 
ered while  the  words  were  on  her  lips,  that  the  man  be- 
fore her  had  really  that  beauty  which  belongs  to  the 
princes  of  Elf-land,  being  tall,  and  strong,  and  meek  be- 
fore women. 

"It  is  you  who  stoop,"  said  Frank,  after  a  pause.  "But 
if  you  will  let  me  be  your  knight,  princess,  I  will  defend 
you  from  all  fierce  dragons  and  naughty  fiends  who  may 
stand  in  our  path." 

"It  will  be  a  gay  adventure,"  said  Katherine,  drooping 
her  eyes  before  his  gaze.  And  then  she  gave  her  silver 
laugh  and  went  away  from  him. 

It  seemed  to  Frank  that  he  was  unworthy  of  the  great 


256  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

favour  promised  to  him.  He  was  even  a  little  afraid, 
knowing  that  in  real  life,  as  in  fairy-land,  there  are  fierce 
dragons  and  naughty  fiends  which  lie  in  wait  for  the  man 
who  does  not  keep  a  watch  over  his  own  heart.  Yet  his 
fear  was  only  for  a  moment,  and  when  he  went  out  to 
buy  the  lavender  gloves  and  the  silver-knobbed  stick,  and 
a  pair  of  patent  boots,  and  a  new  silk  hat — the  adventure 
was  not  to  be  without  expense — he  was  as  merry  as  if  he 
were  preparing  for  his  own  marriage ;  even  more  merry, 
for  there  was  all  the  amusement  of  make-believe  without 
the  responsibility  of  actual  fact. 

In  the  evening  he  had  to  attend  a  dinner  at  the  Man- 
sion House,  where  his  thoughts  wandered  so  much  that 
he  had  to  beg  the  friendship  of  a  fellow-pressman  to  give 
him  the  drift  of  an  important  political  speech  by  the 
Prime  Minister,  of  whose  priceless  words  of  wisdom  on 
the  fascinating  subject  of  Free  Trade  he  had  not  heard 
a  single  syllable.  Upon  returning  to  the  office  he  found 
a  note  on  his  desk.  It  was  from  Katherine,  and  said, 
"I  shall  meet  you  at  Paddington  to-morrow  well  before 
eleven.  I  am  having  a  dress  rehearsal  to-night  with 
Mother  Hubbard." 

When  Frank  put  all  his  things  on  in  the  morning — a 
tail  coat,  well-creased  trousers  (he  had  put  them  under 
his  mattress,  and  slept  on  them),  patent  leather  boots, 
new  silk  hat,  and  lavender  gloves — he  felt  just  as  big  a 
fool  as  a  man  who  is  really  going  to  get  married  at  Han- 
over Square,  or  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster.  He  had  a 
desperate  temptation  to  throw  the  hat  out  of  his  window 
into  Holborn,  to  pitch  his  black  coat  into  the  coal-scuttle, 
and  to  slip  into  a  Norfolk  jacket  and  his  old  sense  of  free- 
dom. It  seemed  absurd  to  be  going  into  the  country  on 
a  day  of  sunshine  dressed  like  an  undertaker.  He  said 
many  violent  things  to  himself  about  the  idiocy  of  human 
nature,  and  then  with  a  last  glance  at  himself  in  a  mirror, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  257 

four  inches  by  three  (which  to  tell  the  truth  slightly  re- 
stored his  cheerfulness,  for  it  was  a  very  good  hat,  and 
not  a  bad-looking  face),  strolled  out  of  Staple  Inn,  and 
hailed  the  nearest  hansom. 

It  was  two  minutes  to  eleven  before  Katherine  ap- 
peared, and  two  minutes  before  the  train  started.  Frank 
had  waited  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour,  and  now,  with 
one  foot  on  the  step  of  an  empty  first-class  carriage,  was 
feeling  that  the  gods  had  mocked  at  him.  Something,  he 
felt  sure,  must  have  prevented  Katherine  from  coming 
with  him.  Perhaps  Vicary  had  sent  her  a  wire  cancelling 
the  engagement  and  sending  her  off  to  some  fancy  ba- 
zaar, or  to  a  breakfast  to  suffragettes  released  from  Hoi- 
loway.  Then  he  saw  her  coming  up  the  platform  fol- 
lowed by  a  porter  with  her  bag,  as  though  the  train  would 
wait  for  her  good  pleasure,  however  late  she  might  be. 
She  wore  a  white  silk  dress  and  a  white  hat  with  pink 
roses,  and  long  white  gloves,  and  she  carried  a  flowered- 
silk  parasol  with  a  long  crooked  handle,  and  she  looked 
as  fresh  and  simple  and  sweet  as  a  shepherdess  in  Dres- 
den china,  or  a  lady  of  the  old  French  court  in  one  of 
Watteau's  pictures.  She  caught  sight  of  Frank  from  the 
far  end  of  the  platform  and  came  towards  him,  smiling. 
Even  from  the  end  of  the  platform  Frank  could  see  that 
she  was  smiling. 

She  dropped  him  a  half-curtsey  on  the  platform,  regard- 
less of  the  gruff  porter,  who  shouted,  "Are  you  going, 
miss?"  and  of  the  guard  who  was  waiting  to  wave  his 
flag.  Frank  took  off  his  hat  and  bent  over  her  white- 
g'oved  hand  as  she  stretched  it  out  to  him. 

"Princess,"  he  said,  "I  was  very  much  afraid." 

"Of  what?" 

"I  thought  you  were  going  to  miss  the  train." 

"Pooh!"  said  Katherine,  "I  wouldn't  have  missed  it 
for  the  world." 


258  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

She  got  into  the  carriage,  and  Frank  stepped  in  after 
her  as  the  train  moved  off. 

"First  class !"  said  Katherine.  "Vicary  only  allows 
second  class  on  a  long  journey." 

"Oh,  I  will  pay  the  difference.  This  is  my  day  out." 
He  stood  watching  her  as  she  peeped  into  a  mirror  be- 
neath the  rack  and  altered  the  position  of  her  hat  by  a 
hair's  breadth.  Then  she  caught  his  eyes  in  the  glass 
and  smiled  at  them.  "How's  this  for  style?"  she  asked, 
turning  round  and  taking  a  corner  seat. 

Frank  said  that  as  far  as  he  could  judge,  and  he  had 
had  very  little  experience,  it  was  quite  perfect.  She  re- 
turned the  compliment  by  saying  that  he  had  put  on  his 
clothes  very  nicely,  and  that  he  looked  exactly  like  the 
hero  of  a  Family  Herald  Supplement.  That,  said  Frank, 
was  a  pretty  brutal  thing  to  say  to  a  man  who  had  violated 
every  principle  of  his  life  in  dressing  himself  up  like  a 
tailor's  dummy,  and  he  pitched  his  hat  on  to  the  rack 
with  such  carelessness  of  its  beautiful  architecture  that 
Katherine  was  shocked  and  angry  at  his  behaviour.  So 
they  quarrelled  for  five  minutes  in  the  most  delightful 
way,  and  then  felt  quite  at  ease  with  each  other,  and 
prepared  to  settle  down  to  a  railway  conversation. 

Of  course,  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  so  pleasant  as 
a  railway  conversation  between  a  man  and  woman  really 
interested  in  each  other.  Only  on  a  desert  island  could 
they  be  so  lonely  as  in  a  railway  carriage  reserved  for 
themselves  on  an  express  train  which  goes  rushing  into 
the  heart  of  the  country  at  sixty  miles  an  hour.  In  no 
other  place  in  the  world  do  a  man's  words  come  so 
swiftly,  so  easily,  so  light-heartedly,  when  there  is  a 
charming  girl  in  the  corner  seat  ready  to  be  amused, 
and  quick  to  answer  his  spoken  thoughts,  and  pleased  to 
reward  his  little  jests  with  laughter  that  is  not  loud  or 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  259 

strained,  but  a  silvery,  rippling  mirthfulness  that  comes 
from  a  gay  spirit. 

Frank  and  Katherine  found  a  thousand  things  to  laugh 
about.  It  was  amusing,  for  instance,  to  make  up  stories 
about  the  lives  of  the  people  who  belonged  to  the  houses 
and  cottages  and  fields  which  sped  swiftly  past  them. 
They  were  short  stories  in  chapters  of  one  sentence,  and 
Katherine  was  the  best  at  the  game. 

"In  that  old  thatched  cottage  there  lives  a  poor  old 
widow  who  was  once  the  beauty  of  the  village  sixty  years 
ago.  Every  Sunday  she  goes  to  that  little  churchyard — 
how  the  sunshine  gleams  on  the  white  tombstones! — • 
and  dreams  a  dream  about  the  boy  who  loved  her.  He 
used  to  come  vaulting  across  that  stile,  and — go  on, 
Frank." 

"And  she  used  to  wait  for  him  at  the  top  of  that  little 
lane  where  the  sign-post  stands.  The  sun  was  always 
in  her  eyes,  which  were  as  blue  as  the  sky  above  those 
white  cottages  on  the  hill.  They  would  go  hand-in-hand 
up  that  winding  path  towards  the  church  there — you  can 
just  see  it  through  the  trees,  Katherine,  and " 

"They  used  to  think  of  the  time  when  they  would  go 
into  that  very  building  there,  and  after  a  little  while  come 
out  as  man  and  wife,  and  live  in  a  farm-house  surrounded 
by  big  barns,  like  that  one  we  just  passed,  and  keep 
cows,  like  those  wading  in  that  pond.  But  one  day  the 
young  man  did  not  come  vaulting  across  the  stile " 

"He  inherited  a  large  fortune  and  went  to  live  in  that 
glorious  old  manor — Elizabethan  by  the  look  of  it,  where 
he  smoked  big  cigars  and  drank  more  brandy  than  was 
good  for  him " 

"And  every  day  for  sixty  years  that  woman  has  gone 
to  the  top  of  the  lane  to  wait  for  him." 

"And  there  is  the  very  old  woman,"  said  Frank,  "shad- 
ing her  eyes  against  the  sun  outside  her  cottage  gate.  She 


260  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

has  not  got  a  tooth  in  her  head,  and  she  is  as  ugly  as  an 
old  witch." 

"But  she  believes  she  is  still  young  and  beautiful,  and 
every  day  she  thinks  her  young  man  will  come  vaulting 
across  the  stile  again." 

That  was  one  of  the  best  stories  they  made  up  to  the 
scenes  outside  the  carriage  window,  and  Katherine  did 
not  laugh  this  time  and  say,  "What  nonsense  you  do  talk, 
Frank !"  when  it  was  finished.  She  said  it  was  an  allegory 
of  most  women's  lives,  and  she  thought  their  imaginations 
were  getting  a  little  morbid. 

Her  gaiety  was  restored  when  at  Rugby  a  boy  came 
to  the  carriage  door  and  handed  in  two  luncheon  bas- 
kets. 

"That  is  a  thoughtful  boy,"  said  Katherine.  "Where 
did  he  get  the  idea  from." 

Frank  had  sent  a  telegram  in  advance  from  Padding- 
ton,  but  he  made  believe  that  it  was  a  little  attention 
always  shown  towards  the  Royal  travellers  by  the  direc- 
tors of  the  line  who  were  aware  that  a  prince  and  princess 
were  travelling  incognito.  Of  course  Katherine  did  not 
believe  him,  but  she  pretended  to,  which  was  better  still, 
and  they  had  a  merry  meal  with  the  luncheon  baskets 
on  their  knees.  Frank  drank  her  health  without  winking 
in  a  tumbler  of  thin  red  wine  which  tasted  like  vinegar, 
and  said  with  his  best  French  accent,  "A  votre  sante, 
princesse."  She  touched  her  glass  with  her  lips  and 
clinked  it  against  his,  and  replied,  "A  vous,  mon  prince !" 

When  they  arrived  at  the  end  of  the  line  Frank  got 
out  of  the  carriage  and  touched  the  tips  of  Katherine's 
fingers,  as  she  jumped  lightly  on  to  the  platform. 

"You  see,"  said  Frank,  "they  have  put  down  the  red 
carpet  for  us,  and  the  station  is  charmingly  decorated  in 
our  honour." 

Above  their  heads  was  a  canopy  of  sky-blue  silk  em- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  261 

broidered  with  the  fleur-de-lis  of  France,  and  the  walls 
of  the  rural  station  were  draped  with  flags  of  many  rich 
colours,  but  not  the  red,  white  and  blue  of  England, 
or  the  blue,  red  and  white  of  Republican  France.  A  num- 
ber of  foreign  gentlemen  descended  from  the  train,  tall 
Frenchmen  with  brown  spade  beards  (like  Elizabethan 
gentlemen),  who  were  received  with  kisses  on  both 
cheeks,  or  with  much  raising  of  hats  and  bending  of 
backs  by  other  foreigners  of  a  similar  type.  Only  one 
language  was  spoken  on  the  platform,  except  by  Frank 
and  Katherine,  and  it  was  the  vivacious,  sparkling  nimble 
tongue  of  France.  It  was  queer  to  hear  it  in  the  heart  of 
Worcestershire. 

Katherine  had  found  a  friend.  It  was  none  other  than 
Edmund  Grattan,  who  was  standing  among  a  group  of 
distinguished-looking  Frenchmen  who  were  laughing 
heartily  at  a  story  he  was  telling  in  their  own  language, 
spoken  with  perfect  fluency  and  with  an  exquisite  accent. 

Katherine  touched  him  on  the  arm,  and  he  turned 
round  quickly,  lifting  his  hat  and  bowing  low.  It  was 
already  dusk,  for  Frank  and  Katherine  had  travelled  a 
long  way  since  eleven  o'clock,  and  for  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  the  Irishman  did  not  recognise  the  elegant  girl  in 
the  white  silk  frock,  and  the  white  hat  with  pink  bows. 
"A  votre  service,  madame."  In  a  flash  he  saw  Kather- 
ine's  smiling  face. 

"What,  Kitty,  you  here!  That  is  good.  You  should 
have  let  me  know,  and  we  could  have  come  down  to- 
gether." Then  he  saw  Luttrell,  and  said,  "But  no,  you 
were  in  good  hands,  and  I  should  have  spoilt  a  delightful 
tete-a-tete."  He  gripped  Frank's  hand.  "You  are  just 
in  time.  Young  Alfonso  will  be  here  in  three  minutes 
by  special  train." 

A  tall  man  with  a  heavy  tread  approached  Frank  and 


262  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

said  politely  but  firmly,  "You  must  move  off  the  platform,, 
if  you  please." 

"That  is  all  right,"  said  Grattan.  "This  lady  and  gen- 
tleman are  London  journalists  and  my  friends." 

"Oh.     If  they  are  friends  of  yours,  Mr.  Grattan " 

The  man  raised  his  hat  and  strolled  away. 

"You  seem  a.  very  important  person,"  said  Katherine. 
"Who  is  that  potentate?" 

"A  Scotland  Yard  man.  I  met  him  in  Madrid  on  the 
marriage  day,  when  the  bomb  went  off  under  the  horses' 
feet.  He  was  not  quite  sharp  enough  that  time,  but  of 
course  the  Spanish  detectives  were  in  charge,  and  a  bright 
lot  they  are,  to  be  sure." 

A  few  moments  after  the  train  in  which  Frank  and 
Katherine  had  travelled  went  off  on  to  a  siding,  there 
was  sound  of  a  motor-car  fussing  and  bubbling  in  the 
station-yard  outside,  a  rattle  of  steel,  and  the  hoarse  voice 
of  a  man  shouting,  "Present  arrrrms !" 

"Le  roi  en  exil,"  said  Grattan. 

The  crowd  of  French  gentlemen  round  the  booking- 
office  ranged  themselves  in  two  ranks  and  bowed  very 
low  as  two  tall  men  came  on  to  the  platform.  One  was 
a  middle-aged  man  with  a  blonde  beard,  and  bluish  eyes, 
and  a  soft,  womanish  face  which  yet  had  an  extraordi- 
nary likeness,  as  it  seemed  to  Frank,  to  old  prints  of 
Henry  IV. 

"Paris  vaut  bien  une  messe." 

Frank  remembered  the  old  epigram,  and  the  figure 
of  that  dare-devil  hero-villain  who  had  fought  and  in- 
trigued his  way  to  the  French  throne  far  back  in  his- 
tory. How  blood  will  out!  After  five  centuries  here 
was  the  same  nose,  the  same  prominent  eyes  of  the  victor 
of  Ivry  belonging  to  a  gentleman  in  a  frock  coat  and  a 
silk  hat,  whose  name  was  Louis  Philippe  Bourbon  Or- 
leans, and  who — but  for  the  republican  instincts  of  a 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  263 

great  people — would  be,  by  right  divine,  or  otherwise, 
King  of  France. 

By  his  side  was  a  young,  clean-shaven  man  with  a  nose 
of  the  same  shape — the  Bourbon  nose  which  not  even  the 
guillotine  could  ever  cut  off,  however  many  heads  were 
sliced  into  the  bloody  baskets  on  the  Place  de  la  Revo- 
lution. 

'The  Due  de  Montpensier,"  said  Grattan.  "Quite  a 
bright  young  fellow." 

A  few  moments  later  a  white  train  glided  alongside  the 
platform,  and  out  of  one  of  the  carriages  came  springing 
with  a  light,  quick  step,  a  tall  boy,  with  a  pale,  melancholy 
face  and  dark,  haunting  eyes,  and  a  mouth  twisted  into  a 
strange,  sad  smile.  Every  hat  on  the  platform  was  swept 
low,  every  head  but  one  bowed  down,  and  for  a  moment 
there  was  silence.  Then  while  the  tall  boy  went  quickly 
towards  the  middle-aged  gentleman  with  the  blonde 
beard,  who  took  both  his  hands  and  kissed  him  twice, 
a  voice  shouted  out,  "Vive  le  roi!  Vive  le  roi  d'Es- 
pagne !" 

A  little  group  of  dark,  handsome,  sallow-faced  young 
men  had  dismounted  from  the  train  and  stood  with  bared 
heads  in  a  half  circle  round  the  two  central  figures  of 
that  tableau,  under  the  silk  canopy  embroidered  with 
fleur-de-lis,  with  a  background  of  orange  and  crimson 
facings. 

"Come  along,"  said  Grattan.  "He  is  going  to  inspect 
the  guard  of  honour."  He  dodged  through  two  lines  of 
tip-toed  foreigners,  and  Katherine,  seizing  Frank's  hand, 
followed  swiftly  through  a  white  wicket  gate  to  the  yard 
outside  the  station.  Here  there  was  a  hollow  square 
framed  on  one  side  by  a  battalion  of  Worcestershire  vol- 
unteers in  khaki,  on  the  other  three  sides  by  a  dense  mass 
of  Worcestershire  gentry  and  yokels  wedged  in  between 
great  motor-cars  with  their  burnished  lamps  and  metal 


264          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

gleaming  like  gold  in  the  glinting  rays  of  the  afternoon 
sun. 

The  tall  boy  with  the  grave  face  and  the  burning  eyes 
and  the  sad,  twisted  smile  came  out  of  the  station  fol- 
lowed by  his  kinsman  of  the  House  of  Bourbon.  At  a 
quick,  sprightly  step  with  his  head  high  and  turned  stiffly 
to  the  right,  the  younger  man  walked  with  a  six-foot- 
three  officer  carrying  a  drawn  sword,  along  the  line  of 
Worcestershire  men  who  held  their  rifles  in  front  of  their 
noses.  The  boy  in  the  silk  hat  and  frock  coat  turned 
and  held  out  his  hand  and  said,  "Thank  you"  to  the  young 
officer,  who  for  a  moment  stared  at  the  hand  of  a  king, 
and  then  tucking  his  sword  under  his  left  arm,  grasped 
it  in  a  good  hard  English  grip. 

"I  like  him!"  said  Katherine,  and  Frank  said  "Who?" 
"The  sad  boy-king;  what  a  wistful  smile  that  is!" 
The  king  without  a  throne  led  the  sovereign  of  the 
proudest,  poorest  nation  of  Europe  to  his  automobile, 
which  in  a  moment  gave  a  long-drawn  sigh  and  then  a 
few  panting  breaths,  and  then  with  a  fierce  snort  bounded 
out  of  the  station-yard  like  one  of  Frank's  imaginary 
dragons,  while  the  Worcestershire  yokels  shouted  "Hoo- 
ray!" 

A  procession  of  motor-cars  and  carriages  streamed  out 
of  the  station-yard  and  then  down  the  High  Street  of  an 
old  town  of  square-built  Georgian  houses,  with  here 
and  there  an  old  gabled  roof  and  timbered  front  of  a 
house  that  had  been  built  when  Elizabeth  was  Queen. 

Grattan  took  Katherine's  hand  and  put  her  arm  through 
his,  and  told  Frank  to  have  the  baggage  sent  up  to  the 
Royal  Arms,  the  best  old  hostelry  in  the  town.  For  the 
first  time  since  his  friendship  with  Grattan,  Frank  wished 
this  Irishman  further  away.  Good  fellow  as  he  was,  he 
was  taking  the  lead  in  an  adventure  which  Frank  re- 
garded as  his  own  with  Katherine  as  his  comrade-in- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          265 

arms.  Katherine  glanced  at  his  face,  and  perhaps  in  a 
woman's  intuitive  way  she  read  the  thought  that  had 
made  him  rather  silent  during  the  last  few  minutes.  She 
told  Grattan  that  they  were  going  to  put  the  baggage  on 
his  shoulders,  or  in  his  cab  if  he  had  one,  and  that  as 
he  was  an  old  and  tried  friend,  she  was  going  to  entrust 
him  with  the  responsible  duty  of  fixing  up  rooms  for 
them  at  the  Royal  Arms.  Meanwhile  she  and  Mr.  Lut- 
trell  had  a  little  business  on  hand  for  their  paper  of  an  en- 
tirely private  and  confidential  character.  Grattan  smiled 
at  her  mysterious  words,  and  protested  that  as  an  old 
journalist  he  did  not  wish  to  poke  his  nose  into  other 
people's  "scoops."  He  would  obey  her  commands  to 
the  letter.  But,  as  a  friend  and  rivai,  he  felt  bound  to 
say  that  if  she  had  any  intention  of  calling  at  the  house 
of  the  king  in  exile  she  might  save  herself  the  journey. 
Strict  orders  had  been  given  to  turn  back  all  members 
of  the  press  and  any  one  not  a  guest,  or  a  servant  of  a 
guest,  at  the  old  farm-house  where  princes  and  princesses 
of  the  Royal  Houses  of  Europe  were  treading  on  each 
other's  heels.  These  people  were  constitutionally  ner- 
vous of  spies  and  anarchists,  and  Scotland  Yard  had 
been  asked  to  put  a  detective  behind  every  bush  of  the 
three-mile  avenue 

"Three  miles?"  said  Katherine.  "Then  we  must  take 
a  carriage." 

Grattan  laughed.  "You  have  let  the  cat  out  of  the 

bag!  My  dear  children,  you  had  much  better  come 

and  have  tea  with  me.  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  get 
through  the  turnstiles  of  the  Zoo  than  for  a  stranger  to 
pass  three  miles  of  policemen  with  strict  orders  to  bar  all 
persons  who  cannot  produce  a  special  permit." 

"Pooh !"  said  Katherine.  "I  am  not  in  the  habit  of 
being  turned  back  by  policemen." 


266  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Grattan  did  not  argue  the  point,  but,  seizing  the  bag- 
gage, bundled  it  into  a  hackney  carriage. 

"Au  revoir/'  he  said.  "For  what  hour  shall  I  order 
your  steaks  and  chip  potatoes  ?" 

"Expect  us  when  you  see  us/'  said  Katherine.  "Mr. 
Luttrell,  kindly  order  a  private  brougham  with  a  coach- 
man who  can  hold  his  tongue." 

Frank  was  restored  to  his  former  gaiety.  Katherine's 
air  of  command  was  magnificent.  She  ordered  a  private 
brougham  and  a  discreet  coachman  with  as  much  assur- 
ance as  Cinderella's  fairy  godmother  when  she  requested 
a  pumpkin  and  four  mice  to  change  into  a  carriage  and 
milk-white  steeds.  She  gave  her  orders  to  Grattan  as 
if  he  were  her  footman,  and  the  Irishman  obeyed  just  as 
promptly.  Frank  himself  made  a  dash  for  a  row  of 
hackney  carriages  drawn  up  outside  the  station-yard 
and  selected  one  in  charge  of  a  driver  who  wore  a  chim- 
ney-pot hat  and  an  old  blue  coat  with  breast  buttons. 
By  his  inarticulate  grunt  which  signfied  that  he  was  dis- 
engaged Frank  was  confident  that  he  could  "hold  his 
tongue."  Providence  was  on  the  side  of  youth  and  ro- 
mance. 

"Admirable !"  said  Katherine,  when  Frank  opened  the 
carriage  door  and  handed  her  in. 

"Tell  him  to  drive  to  the  house,  and  to  answer  no  ques- 
tions on  the  road." 

They  took  precedence  of  Grattan  as  they  drove  out, 
and  Katherine  smiled  graciously  at  the  Irishman  who 
sat  wedged  in  between  two  portmanteaus — the  baggage 
of  these  two  adventurers  which  they  had  calmly  handed 
over  to  him.  He  kissed  his  hand  and  seemed  to  regard 
them  with  amusement,  as  two  wilful  children  who  were 
out  for  trouble. 

Frank  was  nervous.  His  pulses  were  doing  double 
time.  He  had  an  uneasy  feeling  that  "something  might 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  267 

happen."  Without  credentials  it  might  be  dangerous  to 
drive  through  the  lines  of  the  army  of  police  guarding 
a  houseful  of  foreign  royalties.  He  glanced  at  Kather- 
ine.  She  was  sitting  straight  up.  Excitement,  or  the 
drive  through  the  cool  evening  breeze,  had  deepened  the 
colour  on  her  cheeks,  and  had  made  her  eyes  very  lumi- 
nous and  sparkling. 

"How's  this  for  fun?"  she  said. 

Frank  answered  that  he  would  be  glad  to  drive  like 
this  for  ever  down  endless  roads. 

"Oh,  that  would  be  monotonous !  Change  is  the  magic 
thing.  This  is  like  Paradise,  because  we  have  come  from 
Fleet  Street.  After  a  week  here  I  should  long  for  the 
smell  of  the  motor-'buses." 

"No!  no!"  said  Frank.  "Let  us  forget  Fleet  Street 
and  its  stench.  This  smell  is  better  than  a  whiff  of  the 
Press  Restaurant.  It  is  the  scent  of  wet  grass,  and  of 
flowers  which  say  their  prayers  at  this  time  offering  up 
incense  in  that  great  cathedral."  He  pointed  to  a  wood 
of  giant  beeches  on  the  right  of  them  as  they  drove  along 
the  white  winding  road. 

"Listen!"  said  Katherine.  "That  is  the  cathedral 
choir.  A  thousand  little  boy  birds  are  singing  an  anthem 
of  praise  for  one  more  good  day  of  life." 

"To-day,"  said  Frank,  "they  are  singing  to  you.  Do 
you  notice  how  the  sound  gets  louder  as  we  pass?  It  is 
a  song  of  greeting  to  Princess  Snow- White." 

Katherine  was  looking  at  the  river  which  went  winding 
down  below  in  the  green  meadows  flashing  back  the  after- 
noon sun. 

"It  is  like  a  snake  with  golden  scales." 

"This  is  Paradise,  and  that  is  the  wicked  old  serpent, 
and  we "  He  stopped,  and  then  laughed  with  a  sud- 
den embarrassment. 

"Are  like  Adam  and  Eve,"  said  Katherine,  finishing 


268          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

his  sentence.  She  glanced  at  him  under  her  long  brown 
lashes  and  then  looked  far  away  to  the  line  of  purple 
hills  beyond  the  river,  and  said  in  a  thoughtful  way,  "It 
would  be  rather  jolly  to  be  Adam  and  Eve — to  be  quite 
alone  in  the  big  beautiful  world,  Frank  .  .  .  for  a  little 
while."  She  gave  a  deep  quivering  sigh  which  ended  in 
a  note  of  laughter.  "I  should  never  have  to  write  fashion 
articles  or  describe  society  weddings!" 

Frank  drew  a  deep  breath  of  the  air  which  was  fragrant 
with  the  scent  of  the  grass  and  woods.  Perhaps  there 
was  something  rather  intoxicating  in  that  aroma  of  an 
evening  in  the  springtime  in  Worcestershire.  It  gave 
him  a  kind  of  nostalgia,  and  when  he  answered  Kather- 
ine's  words  his  voice  thrilled. 

"Could  we  not  make  a  little  paradise  like  that?" 

Katherine  slipped  her  hand  away  and  whispered, 
"Hush!  Here  comes  the  first  challenge.  Leave  it  to 
me." 

A  man  came  from  behind  a  tree  and  went  to  the  horse's 
head,  raising  his  hand.  The  driver  pulled  up,  and  the 
man  spoke  to  him  in  a  low  voice  and  seemed  to  get  no 
answer  but  a  grunt.  Then  the  man  came  to  the  carriage 
door,  and  said,  "Show  your  permit,  if  you  please." 

"Qu'est-ce-qu'il  dit?"  said  Katherine  to  Frank.  She 
leant  over  the  carriage  and  smiled  at  the  'man  and  spoke 
most  fluently  in  French,  not  a  word  of  which  did  he  seem 
to  understand. 

"Are  you  one  of  the  dock's  guests?"  said  the  man, 
breaking  in  upon  the  rippling  stream  of  words. 

"Comme  ils  sont  stupides,  ces  gens  de  police!"  said 
Katherine.  "II  cut  voir,  n'est  ce-pas,  que  je  suis  Prin- 
cesse  de  pur  sang,  sans  tache  et  sans  reproche.  Mal- 
heureusement,  je  n'ai  pas  ma  petite  couronne  a  la  poche." 

The  man  caught  the  word  "Princesse"  and  repeated  it 
in  Cockney  English.  "Well,  of  course,  if  you're  a  prin- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  269 

cess,  it's  all  right,  I  suppose.  Still  I  shall  get  into  trouble 
if  you  ain't  what  you  ought  to  be,  you  know."  He  mut- 
tered to  himself  something  about  "infernal  lingo"  and 
then  stood  back  from  the  horse's  head.  "Get  on  with 
you,"  he  said  to  the  driver. 

"One  up  to  us,"  said  Katherine  when  they  had  got  be- 
yond ear-shot.  "It's  a  good  thing  these  wretched  police- 
men can't  understand  school-girl  French." 

Frank  said  "Bravo"  with  enthusiasm.  "That  was  a 
brilliant  idea."  But  he  cursed  the  man  in  Els  heart  for 
spoiling  his  dream  of  paradise.  It  was  difficult  to  return 
to  that  subject.  There  are  some  conversations  which 
can  never  be  continued  when  once  the  thread  is  broken. 
Frank  knew  that  the  end  of  the  thread  in  his  web  of 
fancy  had  slipped  out  of  his  hands,  snapped  by  the  heavy 
tread  of  a  plain-clothes  policeman. 

Along  the  three-mile  avenue  they  were  challenged  five 
times,  and  each  time  Katherine  played  her  trick  with 
success.  Scotland  Yard  was  at  fault  in  sending  down 
men  who  had  not  mastered  conversational  French.  No 
doubt  they  would  not  have  been  so  easily  persuaded  by 
a  lady  less  elegant  and  charming  than  Katherine  Hal- 
stead.  But  she  spoke  to  them  with  such  an  air  of  dig- 
nity, softened  by  a  gracious  persuasiveness  that  their 
doubts  were  dispelled.  Frank,  too,  sitting  back,  silent 
and  grave,  with  his  clear-cut  face,  looking  very  aristo- 
cratic under  a  new  silk  hat,  was  not  the  type  of  man  to 
make  a  policeman  suspect  dynamite  cartridges. 

Without  further  trouble  the  two  adventurers  drove 
straight  through  a  pair  of  high  wrought-iron  gates  above 
which  was  the  Royal  Crown  of  France,  and  into  the 
quadrangle  of  a  low-built,  straggling  old  English  farm- 
house, to  which  had  been  added  new  wings,  and  extensive 
outbuildings  and  stables.  A  number  of  motor-cars  were 
drawn  up  on  one  side,  and  across  the  courtyard  there 


270          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

passed  and  repassed  chauffeurs  in  uniform,  French  work- 
men in  white  blouses  and  blue  overalls,  servants  in  light 
blue  coats  and  knee-breeches,  powdered  wigs,  and  white 
silk  stockings,  officials  of  a  higher  rank,  in  black  silk 
coats,  breeches,  and  stockings,  and  some  of  the  foreign 
brown-bearded  men,  dressed  in  frock  suits  and  tall  hats, 
whom  Frank  and  Katherine  had  first  seen  on  the  station 
platform.  On  one  side  of  the  courtyard  was  a  beautiful 
chapel  which  seemed  to  have  stood  through  centuries 
of  English  weather,  and  it  was  joined  to  the  house  by 
an  open  colonnade  of  Gothic  pillars  and  arches.  Its 
secret  was  only  revealed  by  the  French  workmen  in  white 
blouses,  who  were  hammering  at  its  walls  and  putting  on 
last  touches  of  paint.  This  chapel  which  looked  so  an- 
cient and  weather-worn  was  made  of  nothing  but  paste- 
board and  canvas ! 

Frank  gave  his  hand  to  Katherine  at  the  carriage  door, 
and  immediately  the  door  of  the  house  opened  revealing 
two  lines  of  footmen  in  the  livery  of  the  old  Court  of 
France. 

"Isn't  this  rather  risky?"  whispered  Frank,  and  Kath- 
erine answered,  "Not  a  little  bit." 

They  went  up  the  steps  into  a  square  hall  panelled  in 
dark  oak,  with  a  golden  fleur-de-lis  on  each  panel,  and 
between  the  two  lines  of  powdered  footmen  in  scarlet  and 
gold,  whose  white  wigs  bent  low  before  them.  Katherine 
held  her  head  high,  and  swept  over  the  polished  floor  in 
her  white  silk  dress,  as  though  she  were  indeed  a  princess 
coming  home  to  her  father's  house.  Frank  had  a  curious 
feeling  that  he  was  acting  a  part  in  a  pantomime.  He 
would  not  have  been  surprised  if  the  big  doors  at  the  end 
of  the  hall  had  opened  suddenly  and  revealed  a  crowd 
of  dancing  maidens,  or  if  a  saucy  old  mother-in-law  had 
come  tumbling  down  the  stairs  head  over  heels. 

At  the  end  of  the  line  of  footmen  was  a  tall  officer 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  271 

in  white  and  gold  with  a  long  staff.  He  bowed  low  and 
said  to  Frank,  in  French — 

"Whom  may  I  have  the  honour  to  announce?" 

Frank  answered  in  English  and  gave  his  own  name 
and  Katherine's.  The  man  seemed  a  little  surprised,  but 
was  quite  polite. 

"You  wish  to  see  M.  le  Due  d'Orleans?" 

Frank  nodded,  as  if  that  should  be  taken  for  granted. 

"You  have  an  appointment  with  M.  le  Due  d'Orleans, 
no  doubt?" 

Katherine  interposed.  "You  will  have  the  goodness 
to  take  in  our  cards,  will  you  not  ?" 

The  man  bowed,  called  up  a  footman,  and  gave  him  an 
order. 

"Vos  cartes,  s'il  vous  plait,  Monsieur  et  Madame,"  said 
the  man.  He  held  out  a  golden  salver  engraved  with  the 
Arms  of  Royal  France.  Then  he  led  Frank  and  Kath- 
erine down  a  long  passage,  where  servants  were  scurry- 
ing to  and  fro,  and  ushered  them  into  a  small  room  fur- 
nished in  the  style  of  Louis  Quinze.  Bowing  gravely  he 
said  that  Monsieur  and  Madame  would  doubtless  have  a 
little  patience  until  M.  le  Due  1'Orleans  to  whom  he  would 
take  their  cards  should  be  able  to  see  them.  Naturally, 
M.  le  Due  d'Orleans  was  much  occupied.  His  Majesty 
the  King  of  Spain  had  but  just  arrived.  Then  he  re- 
tired, closing  the  door  noiselessly. 

Katherine  sat  down  on  a  gilt-backed  chair  at  a  little 
French  writing-table  on  which  was  a  bowl  of  lilies. 

"We  came,  we  saw,  and  I  think  we  shall  conquer," 
she  said  gaily.  "Experience  has  taught  me  always  to  ask 
for  the  great  personage,  and  never  to  interview  his  sec- 
retary or  his  flunkey.  We  may  have  to  wait  an  hour  for 
the  duke,  but  at  the  end  of  that  time  we  shall  certainly 
get  the  tickets  which  ought  to  have  been  applied  for  a 


272          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

month  ago.  The  Rag  is  like  the  British  Nation.  It  has 
no  system,  but  it  generally  pulls  through." 

"Owing,"  said  Frank,  "to  the  splendid  abilities  of  its 
individuals.  ...  I  should  never  have  had  your  courage, 
Katherine.  When  I  saw  those  bowing  footmen  I  nearly 
fainted." 

"Pooh!"  said  Katherine.  "This  is  child's  play.  It 
is  nothing  to  some  of  my  audacities." 

They  waited  an  hour  in  that  little  room  which  seemed 
like  one  of  the  ante-chambers  of  Versailles,  and  into 
which  the  purple  twilight  came  through  leaded  window- 
panes.  They  sat  on  each  side  of  the  little  French  writ- 
ing-table, and  Frank  talked  about  Marie  Antoinette,  Lu- 
cile  Desmoulins,  Madame  Roland,  the  Princess  de  Lam- 
balle  and  the  women  whose  fair  heads  had  fallen  under 
the  knife  during  the  time  of  Terror.  Katherine  won- 
dered whether  she  could  die  so  bravely,  and  whether  she 
would  bare  her  neck  for  the  guillotine  without  a  tremor. 
Frank  looked  at  her  white  neck  and  shuddered  at  the 
thought  so  that  he  made  her  laugh  at  his  nervous  imagi- 
nation. .  .  . 

How  strange  it  was,  he  said,  to  find  this  Court  in  exile 
in  the  Worcestershire  woodlands,  keeping  up  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  old  regime,  guarding  its  relics  and  jealous 
of  its  blood.  In  the  duke's  service  were  men  who  bore 
titles  famous  in  French  history,  and  the  ribbons  and  dec- 
orations of  old  orders  of  Chivalry.  .  .  . 

So  they  went  on  talking  until  they  forgot  their  jour- 
nalistic mission,  and  Frank,  at  least,  remembered  only 
that  it  was  a  strange,  and  delightful  thing  to  sit  opposite 
Katherine  in  her  white  silk  dress  in  the  old-world  room 
with  its  fragrance  of  sandal  wood  and  lilies,  the  scent 
of  which  would  remind  him  always  of  this  hour  in  the 
twilight.  He  started  when  the  door  was  opened  wide  by 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE.          273 

the  powdered  footman  who  said,  "M.  le  Comte  de  Gram- 
mont." 

A  tall,  handsome  old  man  with  a  white  beard,  in  court 
dress  with  a  blue  scarf  across  his  shirt-front  came  in,  and 
bowed  to  them  with  old-fashioned  courtesy.  He  ex- 
plained that  M.  le  Due  d'Orleans  was  exceedingly  busy, 
owing  to  the  arrival  of  the  King  of  Spain  and  his  .duties 
to  his  numerous  guests.  Perhaps  he  might  have  the 
pleasure  of  doing  them  some  service?  Katherine  ex- 
plained the  object  of  her  visit,  speaking  prettily  and  per- 
suasively in  French.  Her  vivacity  seemed  to  win  the  fa- 
vour of  the  old  French  aristocrat,  for  his  eyes  twinkled 
at  her,  but  when  he  heard  that  she  wanted  two  tickets  for 
the  wedding  next  day  he  raised  his  hand,  and  said,  "Im- 
possible !  There  is  not  a  vacant  seat/' 

But  Katherine  laughed  at  impossibility,  and  the  old 
count  gave  her  two  of  his  own  cards  on  which  he  wrote 
the  words  "Admission  a  la  chapelle  pour  le  mariage  de  S. 
A.  R.  Princesse  la  Louise  de  France."  He  did  more  than 
that,  for,  leading  the  way  himself,  he  showed  Frank  and 
Katherine  the  great  dining-hall  where  men  in  the  old 
court  livery  were  putting  the  last  touches  to  tables  laden 
with  gold  plate,  on  every  piece  of  which  were  the  lilies 
or  the  arms  of  France  under  the  Bourbon  dynasty.  He 
led  them  down  back-passages  where  servants  were  rush- 
ing about  in  a  state  of  inarticulate  excitement,  and,  at 
his  questioning,  explained  incoherently  that  the  King  of 
Spain's  valise  had  gone  astray  and  it  was  but  an  hour  to 
dinner!  "It  must  be  found,  my  friends,"  said  the  old 
aristocrat  quietly,  and  then  passing  across  the  courtyard 
took  his  guests  into  the  chapel  where  the  princess  was 
to  be  married  next  day  to  her  Bourbon  kinsman.  The 
bride  and  bridegroom  were  there,  and  with  them  the  duke, 
the  King  and  Queen  of  Spain,  the  Queen  of  Portugal 
and  a  little  group  of  foreign  ladies  and  gentlemen  who 


274  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

kept  at  a  respectful  distance  from  the  central  figures  in 
the  scene.  Frank  and  Katherine  took  a  brief  glimpse 
at  the  altar  with  its  candles  and  flowers,  the  silk  canopy 
and  hangings,  spangled  with  the  lilies  of  France,  the  gilt- 
backed  chairs  ranged  row  by  row;  and  more  than  one 
glimpse  at  the  pale,  sad  face  of  the  princess  who  was  to 
be  married  here,  at  the  dark,  smiling,  soldier-husband,  at 
the  young  King,  with  his  grave  eyes  and  smiling  mouth, 
and  at  the  blonde  Pretender  to  the  throne  of  France  who 
pointed  out  the  details  of  the  decorations  to  his  visitors. 

Then  at  a  sign  from  their  courtly  old  guide  they  with- 
drew, and  in  the  quadrangle  where  the  carriage  was  still 
waiting  Katherine  thanked  him  for  his  great  kindness  in 
her  fluent,  rippling  French  which  was  like  music  to  the 
ears  of  Frank  Luttrell.  The  old  man  waved  his  hand  to 
them  with  a  gracious  gesture  and  then  went  back  jjito 
the  rambling  old  house,  and  as  the  hackney  carriage  rotted 
down  the  drive  Katherine  leant  back  and  gave  a  gay 
laugh  and  said,  "This  is  a  scoop  for  you,  Frank.  Y6u 
will  be  able  to  write  an  article  from  behind  the  scenes. 
And  we  have  the  tickets  for  to-morrow !  The  motto  for 
journalists  is  Taudace  et  toujours  1'audace !'  "  »• 

Frank  said  that  Katherine  was  wonderful,  that  as  a 
journalist  he  was  a  fool  and  she  was  a  great  master.  He 
would  always  remember  this  adventure  when  he  had  gofce 
with  an  enchanted  princess  to  the  court  of  a  French  King 
who  lived  in  an  English  farm-house.  Surely  it  was  ajl 
a  fairy-tale!  When  he  looked  back  at  the  old  house 
where  lights  were  gleaming  from  every  window  and 
where  the  lamps  on  the  iron  gates  shone  upon  the  golden 
crown  of  France,  when  he  saw  the  high  moon  above  them 
as  they  drove  along  the  white  winding  road,  and  the  dark 
woods,  now  to  the  left  of  them,  touched  by  its  pale  light, 
and  the  river  below,  on  the  right,  like  a  silver  sword 
drawn  from  its  scabbard,  and  when  he  saw  the  lady  in 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  275 

white  sitting  by  his  side,  so  close  to  him  that  the  warmth 
of  her  body  seemed  to  creep  into  his  heart,  he  was  bound 
to  believe  that  he  was  driving  through  dreamland  from 
which  he  would  awake  to  find  himself  before  the  fireless 
grate  of  his  rooms  in  Staple  Inn.  It  was  all  too  fantastic, 
and  fanciful  and  imaginative.  In  spite  of  the  click-clack 
of  hoofs  on  the  hard  road  he  was  sure  that  the  old  horse 
in  front  of  them  was  a  nightmare  which  would  suddenly 
change  into  the  arm-chair  in  his  sitting-room,  or  into 
the  hat-rack  at  the  office.  Katherine  who  laughed  at  his 
incredulity  tried  to  persuade  him  that  all  was  real  by 
taking  his  hand  under  the  rug  which  he  had  wrapped 
round  them.  It  was  a  cold  hand  and  she  warmed  it  by 
putting  it  on  her  lap  and  holding  it  fast.  So  they  sat, 
rather  silent  now,  for  a  mile  or  more,  until  they  came 
into  the  High  Street  of  the  old  Worcestershire  town  and 
pulled  up  at  the  Royal  Arms,  where  Edmund  Grattan  was 
waiting  for  them  with  the  news  that  the  dinner  he  had 
ordered  for  them  was  already  overdone. 

The  coffee-room  of  the  old  hostelry  was  in  possession 
of  the  London  press  and  of  correspondents  to  foreign 
papers,  among  whom  were  several  lady  journalists  who 
greeted  Katherine's  arrival  with  enthusiasm.  Two  or 
three  men  sat  at  table  silently  eating  a  heavy  meal,  and 
Frank  had  enough  experience  to  know  that  they  were 
Scotland  Yard  men.  He  thought  he  recognised  one  of 
them,  who  stared  at  him  curiously,  as  the  man  who  had 
first  challenged  them  on  the  road  to  the  farm-house  with 
the  iron  gates.  From  an  adjoining  room  came  the  sound 
of  a  stringed  orchestra  practising  Mendelssohn's  Bridal 
March,  and  the  coffee-room  was  filled  with  the  noise  of 
a  general  conversation,  of  men  and  women's  laughter, 
the  rattle  of  knives  and  forks,  the  tinkle  of  tea-cups,  and 
the  scratching  of  many  pens  covering  many  slips  of  paper. 
It  was  a  scene  familiar  enough  now  to  Frank  Luttrell, 


276  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

special  correspondent  of  a  London  journal,  but  different 
from  all  others  because  Katherine  Halstead  was  in  the 
crowd,  sitting  with  two  girl  friends  at  table  where  he 
could  see  her  as  he  wrote  his  preliminary  account  of  the 
Court  in  Exile,  and  of  the  preparations  for  the  Royal 
marriage.  Several  times  her  eyes  sparkled  across  at  him, 
and  with  the  inspiration  he  wrote  his  story  in  words  that 
contained  some  of  the  glamour  and  romance  of  those 
impressions  which  were  still  vivid  in  his  mind.  He  went 
round  to  the  Post  Office  and  handed  over  his  column  of 
"copy"  feeling  that  sense  of  relief  and  satisfaction  which 
comes  to  every  journalist  when  he  has  put  his  message 
on  to  the  wires. 

That  evening  Grattan  organised  a  "sing-song"  and 
Katherine  played  the  accompaniments  for  men  who  sang 
old  English  songs  in  a  throaty  baritone,  and  sentimental 
ballads  with  tenor  tenderness,  and  sparkling  French  lyrics 
with  light-hearted  grace.  Frank  sat  in  a  corner  with  his 
hands  behind  his  head  and  his  eyes  half-closed,  taking  no 
part  in  the  music,  but  sensitive  in  a  dreamy  way  to  its 
harmonies.  Katherine  had  slipped  away  from  him  into 
another  world.  A  dozen  men  were  round  the  piano,  and 
she  was  laughing  with  them,  and  playing  for  them.  His 
dream-princess  was  giving  her  beauty  and  her  gaiety  to 
other  men,  and  Frank  felt  that  he  had  been  robbed. 
He  was  alone  with  himself  again,  in  spite  of  the  crowd 
in  the  room,  and  in  his  loneliness  he  comforted  himself 
with  the  memory  of  that  drive  when  Katherine  had  held 
his  hand,  and  when  the  warmth  of  her  body  had  filled 
him  with  a  divine  glow. 

Later  in  the  evening  Katherine  left  the  piano,  and  com- 
ing over  to  Frank,  said  that  she  was  sleepy  and  going  to 
bed.  "The  others  will  keep  it  up  till  midnight,"  she  said, 
"for  Grattan  is  just  beginning  to  tell  his  stories." 

Frank  found  her  candle  for  her  and  lighted  the  way 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          277 

up  a  dark  old  staircase  which  had  been  built  three  hun- 
dred years  ago,  so  that  its  broad  oak  stairs  had  been  hol- 
lowed out  by  the  feet  of  many  travellers  who  had  gone 
up  to  bed  before  they  fell  asleep  for  ever. 

On  the  landing  Frank  held  the  silver  candlestick  over 
his  head  while  Katherine  peered  at  the  numbers  on  the 
door  to  find  her  room.  Standing  there  in  the  oak-pan- 
elled passage  with  the  candle  making  a  pool  of  light  in  the 
surrounding  darkness  it  seemed  to  Frank  that  Katherine 
looked  like  one  of  those  fair  women  of  the  past  who 
must  have  stood  here  centuries  ago  before  vanishing  into 
the  dream-world. 

"This  is  my  room,"  she  said,  and  then  held  out  her 
hand,  smiling  up  at  him.  "We  have  had  a  merry  day. 
.  .  .  Good-night." 

He  put  down  the  candle  on  the  oak  chest  by  the  door. 
He  was  trembling  a  little  and  his  voice  was  troubled  when 
he  took  her  hand  and  bent  over  it  and  said,  "Good-night 
.  .  .  princess."  Then  he  lifted  up  his  head  and  looked 
into  her  eyes,  and  still  holding  her  hand  drew  her  towards 
him. 

"Katherine,"  he  said,  "may  I  have  one  kiss?" 

She  went  rather  white,  and  gave  a  little  whispered  cry 
as  he  put  his  arm  round  and  kissed  her  on  the  lips,  a 
long  and  lingering  kiss,  with  his  eyes  shut.  It  was  the 
first  time  Frank  had  ever  held  a  woman  in  his  arms, 
and  he  held  her  so  close  that  he  seemed  to  crush  her  to 
him,  but  she  did  not  stir,  and  her  face  was  close  against 
his,  and  her  lips  clung  to  his  lips.  He  did  not  know  how 
long  he  held  her  like  that.  The  divine  ecstasy  in  which 
he  swooned  may  have  lasted  a  second  only,  or  an  hour. 
Suddenly  she  drew  away  from  him  and  said,  "Frank! 
Frank !"  in  a  whisper.  The  flush  of  a  deep  red  rose  dyed 
her  face  and  her  eyes  were  moist  with  tears.  She  turned 
and  seized  the  candlestick  quickly  and  went  into  her  room. 


278          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

For  a  moment  she  stood  in  the  doorway,  a  white  figure 
framed  in  darkness  with  the  candlelight  falling  upon  her 
face  and  putting  a  glamour  round  her  hair.  It  seemed 
that  her  eyes  were  smiling  through  tears,  and  with  just 
one  shy,  tender,  tremulous  glance  at  Frank  who  stood 
motionless  outside,  she  whispered,  "Good-night !"  and 
shut  the  door. 

Frank  stumbled  to  his  own  room  on  the  next  floor 
and  sat  on  the  bed  in  the  darkness  for  an  hour  or  more. 
He  heard  Edmund  Grattan  come  upstairs  with  two  or 
three  men,  laughing  and  singing.  He  heard  boots  thrown 
out  into  the  passage,  and  doors  banged.  Then  all  was 
silent,  and  he  still  sat  on  the  bed  with  his  hands  on  his 
knees  and  his  white  face  staring  into  obscurity.  For  a 
while  he  thought  of  nothing,  but  lived  again  in  the  kiss 
he  had  given  to  Katherine,  and  felt  her  warm  body 
against  his  own,  and  breathed  the  fragrance  of  her  hair. 
Then  gradually  he  began  to  think,  and  he  wondered 
whether  she  would  be  angry  with  him  for  his  theft.  He 
was  very  troubled.  Perhaps  she  would  not  forgive  him. 
For  a  moment  of  ecstasy  he  may  have  forfeited  her 
friendship  for  ever.  Yet  she  had  suffered  him  to  hold 
her  in  his  arms.  She  had  not  struggled  or  tried  to  re- 
lease herself,  and  her  lips  had  clung  to  his.  And  after- 
wards though  tears  were  trembling  in  her  eyes,  and  she 
was  very  shy,  she  had  smiled  at  him  and  said,  "Good- 
night," and  there  was  no  anger  or  reproach  in  that  glance 
which  had  gone  into  his  soul  with  a  white  message  of 
hope.  But  presently  he  began  to  reproach  himself.  He 
remembered,  and  groaned  at  the  remembrance,  that  Kath- 
erine had  promised  herself  to  Christopher  Codrington. 
Once  before  when  he  had  asked  for  a  kiss,  she  said  it 
would  not  be  playing  the  game.  If  it  was  wrong  then, 
it  was  still  wrong,  and  Frank  Luttrell,  journalist,  who  had 
the  instincts  of  a  gentleman,  could  not  clear  his  con- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          279 

science  of  having  betrayed  a  friend.  Then  there  came 
into  his  mind  some  words  of  Margaret  Hubbard's,  "We 
must  put  Katherine's  happiness  first.  .  .  .  We  must  all 
do  that."  Frank  thought  over  those  words,  which  seemed 
to  have  a  hidden  meaning  for  him. 

Which  way  did  Katherine's  happiness  lie?  With  Cod- 
rington?  The  man  was  a  careless,  light-hearted,  irre- 
sponsible fellow.  He  did  not  deserve  the  supreme  gift 
of  her  beauty  and  graciousness  and  purity.  Then  Frank 
thought  of  himself  going  hand-in-hand  with  her  down 
the  long  highway  as  to-day  they  had  sat  hand-in-hand, 
driving  along  the  white  road  between  the  river  and  the 
woods.  He  would  be  her  servant  and  knight.  He  would 
have  no  thought  but  for  her  happiness.  He  would 
be  faithful  to  death  and  beyond.  By  that  kiss  their  spir- 
its had  touched  and  joined,  and  were  not  to  be  divided. 

So  Frank,  who  was  a  boy,  spoke  to  his  own  soul  in 
that  language,  which  comes  from  the  heart  to  youth  when 
it  is  first  caught  on  fire  by  the  pure  and  passionate  flame. 

During  the  next  morning  Frank  had  no  opportunity  of 
seeing  Katherine  alone.  At  breakfast  she  gave  him  one 
sly  glance,  and  blushed  so  deeply  that  Grattan,  who  had 
quiet,  observant  eyes,  looked  first  at  her  and  then  across 
at  Frank  in  a  wondering  way,  but  with  that  tactfulness 
which  was  characteristic  of  the  good-hearted  Irishman, 
plunged  into  a  lively  story  which  enabled  Katherine  to 
regain  her  composure. 

After  breakfast,  which  was  at  ten  o'clock,  all  the  jour- 
nalists who  had  come  straggling  down  drove  off  in  every 
variety  of  vehicle  that  can  be  got  in  a  country  town.  A 
young  journalist  named  Verney  joined  Grattan,  Kather- 
ine and  Frank  in  an  open  broughham,  and  they  followed 
the  procession  of  motor-cars,  gigs,  and  pony  carts  up  the 
long  road  between  the  river  and  the  woods  which  had 
been  so  dream-like  under  the  light  of  a  silver  moon. 


28o          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

In  the  quadrangle  of  the  old  farm-house,  facing  the 
pasteboard  chapel  which  looked  so  venerable  and  substan- 
tial, there  came  a  seemingly  endless  stream  of  automo- 
biles from  all  parts  of  the  countryside  from  which  de- 
scended characters  in  costumes  so  strange  and  gorgeous, 
that  even  under  the  bright  sun,  Frank  was  reminded 
again  of  a  scene  in  a  pantomime.  Spanish  hussars  in 
sky-blue  uniforms  glittering  with  gold  lace,  Italian,  Aus- 
trian, Hungarian,  Servian,  and  Roumanian  officers  in  red 
and  gold,  green  and  gold,  white  and  gold,  with  gold  hel- 
mets or  plumed  hats,  or  shakos  with  white  osprey  feath- 
ers, members  of  the  old  French  noblesse  in  court  dress 
with  foreign  stars  and  orders,  a  Polish  prince  in  a  great 
bearskin  hat  and  cloak  with  ropes  of  pearls  round  his 
neck,  with  glittering  stones  on  every  finger  and  on  each  of 
his  two  thumbs,  and  a  huge  flat  face  fringed  with  brown 
hair  and  thickly  rouged  on  each  cheek,  princesses  and 
grandes  dames  from  the  courts  of  Europe,  women  whose 
ugliness  was  redeemed  by  refinement  and  elegance,  and 
women  whose  beauty  had  the  exquisite  charm  and  deli- 
cacy of  the  portraits  once  painted  at  the  court  of  Ver- 
sailles by  Madame  Vigee  le  Brun,  gathered  together  in  the 
courtyard  of  the  old  English  farm-house  and  entered 
through  the  lines  of  powdered  footmen  in  the  Royal  livery 
of  the  ancien  regime  who  again  were  drawn  up  in  the  hall. 

In  a  little  while  Frank  and  Katherine  stood  side  by 
side  in  the  chapel,  under  the  sky-blue  canopy  spangled 
by  the  lilies  of  France,  where  an  organ  pealed  out  tri- 
umphantly, and  an  unseen  choir  of  men  and  women's 
voices  sang  exultantly,  as  the  bridal  procession  passed 
slowly  up  the  nave,  towards  the  flower-laden  altar,  with 
its  tall  candles ;  where  a  French  priest,  a  kinsman  of  the 
Bourbon  House,  waited  to  solemnise  this  marriage  be- 
tween prince  and  princess  of  the  Blood  Royal.  There 
was  something  strangely  thrilling  in  this  scene  where 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          281 

into  the  paste-board  chapel  there  came  crowned  sover- 
eigns of  Europe,  princes  and  princesses  of  the  reigning 
houses,  and  with  the  uncrowned  King,  and  the  faithful 
adherents  of  a  Court  in  Exile,  which  still  cherishes  the 
tradition  of  an  ancient  dynasty  now  passed  away  into 
the  shadow  land  of  history. 

But  as  Frank  Luttrell  looked  at  the  pale  bride  beneath 
her  long  lace  veil,  at  the  soldier-prince  who  was  soon  to 
be  her  husband,  at  the  tall,  blonde-bearded  man  in  whose 
veins  there  was  the  blood  of  the  Sun-King,  of  Henri 
IV.,  of  St.  Louis,  and  of  Charlemagne,  at  all  these  gor- 
geous figures  in  blue  and  scarlet  and;- 'white  and  gold, 
many  of  whom  claimed  names  and  titles  famous  in  the 
annals  of  old  French  chivalry,  it  seemed  to  him  that  they 
were  all  ghosts,  all  unreal,  all  figures  of  fancy  in  a  world 
of  make-believe.  This  was  not  real  life.  The  bride  was 
not  really  a  princess  of  France.  These  grand  titles  had 
been  abolished  by  the  Republic.  The  only  real  people 
were  Katherine  and  Edmund  Grattan  and  himself  and  the 
journalists  who  stood  in  front  of  the  gilt-backed  chairs 
watching  the  drama,  making  notes  of  costumes  and  scenic 
effects,  copying  down  the  programme  of  music  which  one 
of  them  had  obtained.  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  jour- 
nalists are  the  only  real  people  in  the  world.  Life  itself 
is  but  a  pageant,  a  drama  which  is  sometimes  comedy  and 
sometimes  tragedy,  with  no  other  purpose  than  to  provide 
descriptive  articles  to  the  real  people  who  come  out  of 
Fleet  Street  when  the  curtain  rings  up,  and  go  behind 
the  scenes  with  their  notebooks  and  pencils.  To  them 
everything  in  life  is  but  a  peep-show,  and  they  watch  a 
bleeding  heart,  a  soul  in  agony,  a  face  behind  prison  bars, 
a  murderer  in  the  dock,  a  Royal  wedding,  a  coronation, 
with  the  same  sense  of  detachment— sometimes  rather  in- 
terested, sometimes  very  bored,  with  all  this  mimicry,  and 
these  stage  effects,  but  never  forgetting  that  they  are  the 


282  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

lookers-on,  the  living  people  in  the  stalls  and  gallery,  crit- 
icising and  describing  the  puppets  and  their  theatrical 
performances. 

While  the  music  played  softly  and  tenderly,  and  the 
bride  and  bridegroom  knelt  at  the  altar,  and  the  priest 
prayed  over  them,  and  preached  to  them  in  French,  con- 
juring up  the  old  traditions  of  their  Royal  House,  Frank 
kept  his  eyes  on  Katherine.  She  was  the  real  princess, 
the  other  was  only  one  of  the  puppets.  She  was  true 
flesh  and  blood,  the  other  was  a  pale  ghost  kneeling  in  a 
pasteboard  chapel.  As  Katherine  stood  watching  the 
wedding  scene  with  intense,  observant  eyes,  she  was  the 
only  real  person  in  the  world  to  Frank  Luttrell,  and  only 
if  he  might  drink  the  sweetness  of  her  lips  again,  and 
breathe  the  fragrance  of  her  hair,  would  life  be  real  to 
him.  .  .  . 

After  the  Royal  wedding  the  representatives  of  the 
British  and  foreign  press  were  entertained  to  a  sumptuous 
banquet  in  the  hunting  museum  of  the  uncrowned  king 
adorned  with  the  trophies  of  his  sport  in  Africa  and  other 
lands.  The  Comte  de  Grammont  in  his  court  dress  pre- 
sided at  the  table,  and  Katherine  sat  at  his  right  hand. 
Beyond,  in  the  banqueting  room,  the  Bourbon  kings  and 
princes  and  princesses,  and  the  noblesse  of  their  courts 
raised  their  glasses  to  the  pale  bride,  and  then  to  Louis 
Philippe  d'Orleans,  soi-dlsant  King  of  France. 

The  journalists  of  Fleet  Street  were  the  guests  of  that 
King  in  exile,  and  he  was  generous  in  his  hospitality, 
knowing  that  by  their  quick  pens  would  the  history  of  this 
day  of  solemn  ceremonial  be  told  to  the  world.  No  doubt 
he  wanted  his  advertisement  like  other  business  men  and 
he  was  prepared  to  pay  for  it.  But  unlike  some  business 
men  (who  do  not  speculate  in  crowns)  this  pretender  to 
the  throne  of  France  treated  his  journalist  guests  as  peo- 
ple of  education  and  breeding.  The  Comte  de  Gram- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  283 

mont,  his  representative  at  the  table,  was  as  courteous 
to  the  members  of  the  press  as  though  they,  also,  were 
of  the  old  noblesse,  and  perhaps  he  may  have  remem- 
bered that  the  writers  of  history  belong  to  the  old  aris- 
tocracy of  letters  which  has  always  been  more  powerful, 
in  spite  of  poverty,  than  that  of  worldly  rank  and  wealth. 
For  they  have  made  and  unmade  kings,  and  their  pens 
have  been  sharper  than  swords.  So  he  lifted  his  glass  to 
them,  rising  from  his  seat,  and  then  with  a  charming 
grace  touched  Katherine's  glass  with  his  own  before  set- 
ting his  lips  to  it. 

It  was  with  gay  spirits  that  all,  but  one,  of  these 
men  and  women  journalists  went  back  to  Fleet  Street  in 
a  special  train  from  the  country  town  three  miles  away. 
From  the  corridor-carriages  the  sound  of  laughter  was 
wafted  out  of  the  windows  to  rustics  who  leant  over  five- 
barred  gates,  to  children  who  waved  handkerchiefs  in  the 
fields,  and  to  the  meek-eyed  cows,  who  (as  one  of  these 
journalists  scribbling  his  copy  in  a  corner  would  say) 
were  standing  knee-deep  in  the  "lush  grass,"  as  the  train 
sped  swiftly  through  the  country.  Frank  had  a  corner 
seat  opposite  Katherine  and  Edmund  Grattan  and  a  row 
of  young  men  and  women  who  were  playing  shuttle-cock 
and  battledore  with  funny  tales,  though  none  could  keep 
pace  with  the  little  Irishman.  Frank  was  not  gay  in 
spirit.  Katherine  avoided  his  eyes,  and  once  only  on  the 
journey  looked  across  to  him  beneath  her  long  brown 
lashes.  There  was  a  message  in  that  quick  glance,  and 
Frank  found  that  the  journey  was  not  too  long  while 
he  searched  his  heart  for  an  interpretation. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Two  days  after  this  episode  in  the  life  of  a  journalist 
Frank  Luttrell  met  Christopher  Codrington  in  Fleet 
Street.  This  tall  young  man  had  just  come  back  from 
the  country,  and  was  dressed  charmingly  in  a  fawn- 
coloured  suit  with  a  bowler  hat  to  match.  They  went 
well  with  his  golden  eyebrows  and  his  pale,  clean-shaven 
face.  Frank's  face  deepened  in  colour  when  Codrington 
raised  his  silver-knobbed  stick  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street  and  then  crossed  the  road  and  came  towards  him. 
He  had  aji  uncomfortable  sensation.  Almost  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  avoided  meeting  the  eyes  of  a  friend. 
The  truth  was  that  since  his  return  from  Worcestershire 
he  had  taken  himself  severely  to  task  for  that  kiss  which 
had  been  stolen  outside  a  bedroom  in  an  old-fashioned 
inn.  He  had  put  himself  in  the  dock  before  twelve  good 
and  true  principles  who  had  been  sworn  in  at  the  old 
Rectory  years  ago;  he  had  examined  evidence  on  oath 
before  the  judgment  seat  of  his  conscience,  and  he  had 
convicted  himself  of  conduct  unworthy  of  what  Bellamy 
would  call  "a  scholar  and  a  gentleman."  It  will  have 
been  realised  before  now  that  Luttrell  was  not  as  many 
men  are  who  take  life  as  they  find  it,  and  make  the  most 
of  its  joyous  moments  without  self-analysis. 

Having  received  a  verdict  of  guilty  he  proceeded  to 
pass  sentence  upon  the  prisoner.  It  was  what  journal- 
ists like  himself  would  call  an  "exemplary"  one.  It  was 
banishment  from  the  society  of  Katherine  Halstead,  ex- 
cept on  matters  of  strict  business.  Reviewing  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  without  bias,  he  concluded  that, 

284 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          285 

without  being  even  more  of  a  cad  than  he  had  already 
proved  himself,  he  could  not  play  with  temptation  be- 
fore which  he  was  sure  to  fall.  So  long  at  least  as  Kath- 
erine  remained  engaged  to  Codrington  he  would  play  the 
game  as  she  herself  had  desired,  and  as  he  had  always 
been  taught.  He  was  very  sorry  for  himself,  and  when 
he  shut  himself  up  in  the  whitewashed  cell  of  his  con- 
science he  stared  at  its  blank  walls  with  all  the  despair 
of  a  convict  on  his  first  day  of  penal  servitude.  It  was 
no  wonder  then  that  when  Codrington,  the  man  whose 
friendship  he  had  betrayed,  came  towards  him  he  felt 
horribly  uneasy. 

Christopher  Codrington  seemed  to  be  enjoying  a  pro- 
found melancholy.  He  shook  hands  with  Luttrell 
mournfully  and  then  looked  far  away  to  the  distant  hill 
country  of  Ludgate.  Luttrell  asked  if  anything  were  the 
matter,  and  Codrington  said  that  nothing  mattered  now. 
The  sun  had  gone  out  of  his  life  and  he  was  in  darkness. 
He  was  a  mere  shadow  walking  without  a  purpose  in  the 
night.  He  would  be  extremely  glad  if  Luttrell  would 
have  a  drink  with  him.  He  desired  his  sympathy  and 
consolation. 

Frank  was  disturbed.  He  wondered  what  calamity  had 
overtaken  this  man,  and  he  was  extraordinarily  moved 
by  the  thought  that  Codrington  was  seeking  his  sympathy 
—of  the  man  who  had  betrayed  his  friendship.  He  asked 
where  they  could  find  a  quiet  place  for  a  chat,  and  Cod- 
rington suggested  the  smoking-room  of  a  tavern  over  the 
way  where  he  was  in  the  habit  of  writing  his  copy,  and 
sipping  "tawny  port"  in  leisure  half-hours.  The  two  men 
walked  across  the  street  in  silence.  Codrington  had  the 
air  of  Sydney  Carton  going  to  the  guillotine  as  imper- 
sonated by  Martin  Harvey  in  The  Only  Way.  Two  or 
three  passers-by  turned  round  to  look  at  this  tall  young 
man  with  the  grave,  handsome  face,  an  elegant  bowler 


286  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

hat  at  an  oblique  angle  over  his  right  eye,  his  silver- 
knobbed  stick  tucked  under  his  arm,  his  right  hand  thrust 
deep  into  the  breast  of  his  light  brown  coat. 

As  he  walked  he  sighed  deeply,  and  Frank  had  the 
curious  thought  that  the  melancholy  of  a  tall  man  must 
be  greater  than  that  of  a  short  one,  for  his  heart  has  to 
go  a  long  way  down  to  get  into  his  boots. 

For  some  time  after  they  had  taken  their  seats  on  the 
leather  lounge  in  the  smoking-room,  which  at  this  hour 
of  the  morning  was  almost  deserted,  Codrington  smoked 
a  cigarette  with  long  silences  between  stray  sentences 
about  life  and  "the  street."  He  asked  Frank  whether 
he  did  not  think  that,  on  the  whole,  the  creatures  of  imag- 
ination were  more  real  than  those  walking  the  highways 
of  actuality.  Frank  assented  to  the  proposition  without 
argument.  Then  he  said  with  one  of  his  long-drawn  sighs 
that  after  some  years  in  Fleet  Street  the  heart  of  man 
becomes  callous,  and  less  sensitive  to  the  blows  and 
bludgeonings  of  Fate.  Frank  who  had  not  been  a  year 
in  Fleet  Street  supposed  that  Codrington  was  right.  Five 
minutes  later,  towards  the  end  of  a  glass  of  port,  Cod- 
rington reflected  that  no  suffering  is  without  value,  and 
that  the  memory  of  golden  days,  though  followed  by 
tragedy,  is  as  much  as  a  man  may  hope  for  without  pre- 
sumption. Frank  did  not  care  to  dispute  this  assertion, 
for  it  was  wonderfully  in  accord  with  his  own  mood. 

Then  at  last,  after  more  vague  and  melancholy  and 
philosophical  axioms,  Codrington  turned  to  Frank  and 
said  with  a  grave  courtesy — 

"Luttrell,  you  have  played  your  cards  well.  Believe 
me  that  though  I  am  a  wounded  man  I  bear  no  malice." 

Frank  was  raising  a  glass  of  wine  to  his  lips.  His 
face  went  redder  than  that  doctored  claret,  and  he  set 
down  the  glass  with  a  trembling  hand  so  that  the  wine 
slopped  over  the  brim. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  287 

"What  do  you  mean,  Codrington  ?"  he  said  in  a  queer 
shaky  voice.  "I  don't  understand." 

Codrington  said  it  was  all  very  simple,  and  he  begged 
Frank  not  to  harbour  for  a  single  moment  the  thought 
.that  he,  Codrington,  would  accuse  him  of  unfair  or  un- 
gentlemanly  conduct.  Before  Frank  had  come  into  Fleet 
Street  Codrington  had  (he  said)  suspected,  not  without 
pain,  that  Katherine  Halstead  would  pass  away  from  him 
like  the  fair  women  of  his  dreams.  They  had  laughed 
together,  they  had  gone  on  gay  adventures,  they  had  been 
buffeted  in  the  crowd,  they  had  sipped  the  wine  of  life 
out  of  the  same  glass,  as  it  were,  and  always  she  had 
been  a  good  and  tender  comrade,  but,  alas,  never — never 
— once — his  sweetheart  and  heart's  mistress.  He  had 
realised,  with  infinite  sadness,  as  Frank  would  readily 
believe,  that  he  had  not  lighted  that  divine  fire  in  her  soul 
which  once  in  a  lifetime  must  flame  in  every  woman's 
heart.  She  was  always  virginal,  cold  even  when  most 
kind,  keeping  him  aloof  though  they  might  touch  hands, 
never  coming  to  him  with  outstretched  arms  across  that 
bridge  which  separates  a  man  from  a  woman  until  their 
spirits  touch  and  intermingle.  At  times  she  had  frozen 
him  by  her  cold  and  chaste  friendship.  Her  light  arrows 
of  satire  had  hurt  him,  and  he  had  bled.  (Codrington 
held  up  his  glass  of  port  wine  and  looked  at  it  as  if  it 
were  his  blood.)  Her  criticism  of  his  little  foibles — and 
Frank  would  know  that  like  other  men  he  had  his  pe- 
culiar weaknesses— had  at  times  seemed  too  candid,  even 
a  little  hard  and  bitter.  Alas!  alas!  he  would  not  re- 
proach her  with  that.  She  had  been  justified,  only  too 
well.  .  .  .  Then  at  last  it  was  borne  home  upon  him  that 
Katherine  and  he  would  never  be  more  than  friends.  He 
knew,  as  though  it  had  been  told  him  in  a  vision,  that  one 
day  a  stranger  would  come  riding  into  Fleet  Street  and 
would  lift  her  upon  his  saddle  and  ride  away  with  her 


288  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

into  the  beautiful  country  beyond  the  noise  and  roar  of 
the  city.  (Codrington  paused  and  said,  "Hark!"  and 
from  the  street  outside  came  the  noise  of  the  motor-omni- 
buses and  the  tumult  of  the  traffic.)  It  so  often  hap- 
pened like  that.  Into  Fleet  Street,  now  and  then  came 
people  of  another  world — a  beau  sabreur,  dashing,  de- 
bonnair,  who  for  a  time  had  laid  aside  his  sword  for  a 
pen ;  or  some  man  with  a  poet's  heart  who  came  wan- 
dering into  Alsatia  to  watch  its  drama  for  a  while,  to 
read  its  riddles,  and  then  to  go  forth,  having  plucked  one 
of  the  few  roses  that  bloom  in  its  dusty  highway.  These 
men  go  through  Fleet  Street  as  one  phase  of  the  adven- 
tures of  life.  They  go  through  it,  but  they  never  belong 
to  it;  they  are  only  visitants,  and  knights  errant  of  the 
pen — like  Luttrell  himself. 

"I  have  come  to  stay/'  said  Frank  in  a  low  voice.  "I 
am  one  of  the  crowd." 

But  Codrington  raised  his  hand,  and  said,  "No  .  .  . 
you  are  one  of  the  visitants." 

Then  he  resumed  his  narrative,  in  which  he  seemed  to 
find  a  melancholy  satisfaction. 

Every  day  he  had  waited  for  the  stranger  who  would 
light  the  torch  in  Katherine's  heart.  He  was  bound  to 
come,  if  not  to-day  then  to-morrow,  if  not  to-morrow 
then  the  day  after.  And  at  last  he  had  come.  When  he 
saw  Luttrell  in  the  reporters'  room 

Frank  went  very  white  and  cried  out,  "Nonsense,  Cod- 
rington ;  for  heaven's  sake,  man " 

But  Codrington  raised  his  hand  again  and  went  on. 

When  he  had  seen  how  Katherine's  eyes  brightened  at 
the  sight  of  him,  when  he  saw  them  talking  over  the  of- 
fice fire,  when  night  after  night  he  knew  that  Luttrell 
went  to  the  flat  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue,  above  all  when 
Katherine  became  colder,  more  satirical,  more  impatient 
with  his  little  foibles — which  he  did  not  disguise — and 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  289 

sometimes  was  more  hard  and  bitter  than  ever  before, 
then  he  knew  that  the  inevitable  had  happened. 

For  a  time  he  had  struggled  with  his  fate.  He  had 
tried  to  win  Katherine  away.  He  had  almost  frightened 
her  with  the  burning  light  of  his  eyes.  Oh  yes,  he  knew 
that  she  avoided  his  eyes  and  was  sometimes  afraid. 
Poor  child!  Poor  child!  He  had  even  found  it  in  his 
heart  to  hate  his  rival.  He  must  confess  to  Luttrell  that 
his  handsome,  boyish  face,  his  tall,  lithe  figure,  his  Ox- 
ford manners,  his  rather  cold,  superior  airs 

Frank  said,  "Don't !"  and  his  face  flushed  hotly,  but 
Codrington  smiled  with  his  grave  sad  smile  and  said, 
"I  do  not  flatter  you ;  I  only  say  that  these  characteristics 
of  yours  filled  me  with  a  jealousy  which  I  now  regret." 

But  it  was  only  for  a  little  while.  Frank's  shyness — 
he  used  the  simple  word  with  diffidence — his  charming 
amiability,  his  fine  breadth  of  sympathy,  his  grace  of 
spirit  had  stolen  into  Codrington's  heart  and  won  his  ad- 
miration. He  realised  before  the  final  blow  came  that 
Luttrell  was  the  one  man  in  the  world  who  was  worthy 
of  Katherine. 

Frank  rose  from  his  chair. 

"Codrington,  for  God's  sake,  let  us  chuck  this  conver- 
sation. You  have  no  idea  how  utterly  mistaken.you  are. 
I  cannot  understand " 

"You  must  understand." 

Codrington  spoke  almost  sternly.  Then  he  called  to 
the  waiter  to  bring  another  glass  of  port  for  himself 
and  a  claret  for  his  friend.  Frank  refused  the  claret, 
but  he  sat  down  again,  leaning  forward  over  the  small 
table  upon  which  he  had  placed  his  arms.  He  would 
hear  Codrington  out  and  let  him  tell  his  fantastic  story 
in  his  own  way. 

Codrington  reached  the  climax  of  his  narrative,  and 
wiped  some  beads  of  sweat  off  his  white  forehead. 


290  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Katherine  gave  me  the  coup  de  grace  last  night." 

He  put  his  hand  to  his  heart  as  though  the  wound  were 
still  bleeding,  and  then  drank  his  glass  of  port  in  one 
breath. 

"She  was  very  kind,  very  good,  very  beautiful.  She 
asked  me  to  release  her.  God !  to  release  her !  as  though 
I  would  keep  any  woman  chained  to  me  by  any  other 
links  than  love !  She  said  that  we  had  both  made  a  mis- 
take, and  that  our  engagement  ought  not  to  drag  on  with- 
out a  purpose.  It  could  never  end  in  marriage.  .  .  . 
Then  she  thanked  me  for  all  my  goodness  and  kindness. 
Ha!  Ha!" 

Codrington  laughed  in  a  hollow,  mirthless  voice  which 
startled  one  man  on  the  other  side  of  the  smoking-room 
who  put  down  a  pink  paper  to  stare  at  him. 

"She  gave  me  back  my  letters,  in  which  I  had  written 
many  foolish  little  things,  the  bright  fancies  of  summer 
days,  the  rose-tinted  dreams  of  nuits  blanches.  .  .  .  Lut- 
trell,  I  burnt  them  last  night  after  leaving  her,  one  by 
one  after  touching  it  with  my  lips — you  will  understand — 
and,  one  by  one,  as  each  letter  was  devoured  by  the 
flames  it  was  as  though  the  spirit  of  a  dream  were  being 
dissolved  in  the  eternal  ether." 

He  sighed  deeply  and  was  silent  for  a  while,  and  Frank, 
stirred  by  a  deep  emotion,  sat  with  a  white  face  and 
downcast  eyes. 

"Thank  heaven,"  continued  Codrington,  "I  did  not  re- 
proach her.  I  believe  I  may  do  myself  the  justice  of  say- 
ing that  I  behaved  like  a  gentleman — an  eighteenth-cen- 
tury gentleman,  if  you  will  forgive  the  allusion.  I 
thanked  her  for  the  truest  comradeship  that  any  woman 
has  given  to  any  man.  I  told  her  I  would  always  cherish 
the  memory  of  the  hours  we  had  spent  together  as  the 
most  precious  reminiscences  of  a  life  not  without  exper- 
ience. We  had  a  very  tender  hour  together,  and  when 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          291 

I  left  I  kissed  her  hand  for  the  last  time,  and  she  was 
good  enough — you  will  not  begrudge  me  this  last  favour, 
Luttrell — to  touch  my  forehead  with  her  lips." 

He  was  silent,  and  for  a  moment  his  face  flushed  with 
genuine  emotion,  and  there  were  real  tears  in  his  eyes. 

Frank  raised  his  head  and  looked  across  at  him  with 
steady,  fixed  eyes.  His  voice  was  strangely  calm  when  he 
said — • 

"Why  do  you  tell  me  all  this,  Codrington?  What  has 
it  got  to  do  with  me  ?" 

Codrington  rose  to  his  great  height  and  stretched  out 
his  hand. 

"My  dear  fellow,  there  is  nothing  left  for  me  but  to 
congratulate  you — which  I  do  from  my  heart.  We  have 
been  rivals  and  you  have  won;  but  if  my  friendship  is 
worth  anything  to  you,  Luttrell,  it  is  yours,  now  and  al- 
ways. God  bless  you,  and  be  good  to  little  Katherine !" 

He  held  Frank's  hand  in  a  firm  grip  and  smiled  down 
upon  him  in  a  kindly  way.  Perhaps  at  this  moment  Cod- 
rington knew  that  he  was  playing  the  game  supremely 
well,  and  was  glad  as  all  men  are  when  they  act  up  to 
the  ideals  of  their  own  personality. 

Frank  could  not  find  words  to  express  his  agitation. 
He  could  only  stammer  out  something  about  his  never 
having  spoken  a  word  of  love  to  Katherine,  and  that  Cod- 
rington was  wildly  and  absurdly  wrong  .  .  .  though  he 
thanked  him  from  his  heart,  and  would  always  be  proud 
of  his  friendship. 

But  Codrington  smiled,  and  said,  "Hush!  I  respect 
your  emotions.  Let  us  go — you  to  your  dreams  and  I  to 
mine  ...  but  oh,  how  different !" 

He  put  his  hat  on  carefully,  regarded  himself  for  a 
moment  in  a  mirror,  and  then  strode  out  of  the  tavern 
with  his  head  held  high  like  a  man  who  was  going  to  face 


292  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

death  unflinchingly.  Frank  followed,  feebly  and  foolish- 
ly, feeling  a  mere  worm  behind  such  nobility,  but  yet  a 
worm  with  a  wild,  tumultuous  spirit.  In  Fleet  Street 
Codrington  turned,  lifted  his  hat  in  a  grave,  old-fashioned 
way,  and  went  off  with  a  long,  melancholy  stride. 

Frank  himself  turned  into  the  Temple  and  paced  Foun- 
tain Court  and  King's  Bench  Walk  for  half-an-hour. 
The  sun  was  shining  on  this  spring  day,  and  London  spar- 
rows were  preening  themselves  on  the  edge  of  the  basin 
— while  the  fountain  sprayed  a  sparkling  jet  of  water 
— and  twittered  in  the  trees,  whose  fresh  leaves  were 
still  unblackened  by  London  smoke.  A  breeze  came  up 
from  the  river  across  the  Temple  Gardens,  and  the  day 
was  so  genial  in  its  promise  of  an  early  summer  that 
even  lawyers  walked  with  an  elastic  tread  to  their  cham- 
bers, and  lawyers'  clerks  were  whistling  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  sparrows  chirped.  Frank  saw  and  heard 
none  of  these  things,  yet  in  spite  of  a  deep  perplexity  he 
was  uplifted  by  a  strange  sense  of  gladness.  Katherine 
had  broken  with  Christopher  Codrington  and  she  was 
now  free.  That  sentence  kept  ringing  in  his  brain  like  a 
song.  She  was  free !  He  was  glad  for  her  sake,  honest- 
ly glad  for  her  sake.  That  strange,  unconventional  en- 
gagement had  not  been  good  for  her.  It  could  have  led 
to  no  certain  happiness.  But  what  did  it  mean  to  him? 
Why  was  he  excited,  so  that  his  heart  was  fluttering  with 
a  quick,  uneven  beat — so  that  he  wanted  to  laugh  out  loud 
with  ridiculous,  unreasoning  joy?  Codrington  had 
spoken  wild  things.  He  had  assumed  things  which  were 
by  no  means  to  be  taken  for  granted.  He  had  shaken 
Frank's  hand  as  a  man  who  had  out-rivalled  him,  and 
had  won  what  he  had  lost.  He  had  been  immensely 
magnanimous.  At  least,  in  spite  of  his  somewhat  melo- 
dramatic melancholy,  he  had  been  really  good-hearted  and 
generous.  At  the  thought  of  Codrington's  words  of 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  293 

friendship,  evidently  sincere  and  unselfish,  Frank  was 
touched  by  a  tender  feeling  for  this  eccentric  character, 
and  conscience-stricken  at  the  memory  of  the  contemptu- 
ous and  ill-natured  opinions  he  had  harboured  against 
him. 

But  he  would  be  a  fool  if  he  took  all  Codrington's 
words  at  their  face-value.  As  an  imaginative  writer  and 
speaker,  Codrington's  statements  had  always  to  be  dis- 
counted. No  doubt  it  was  true  that  some  such  scene 
as  he  described  had  taken  place  between  Katherine  and 
him.  No  doubt  he  had  burnt  those  letters,  one  by  one 
(and  Frank  was  deeply  moved  by  the  thought  of  such 
self-inflicted  suffering),  but — what  then?  Was  he  not 
mad  to  think  for  a  single  moment  that  Katherine's  ac- 
tion was  intended  as  a  message  to  him — Frank  Luttrell  ? 
Was  it  not  more  likely  that  Katherine  was  rejoicing  now 
in  her  new  liberty  which  she  would  not  be  ready  to  ex- 
change for  any  other  bond? 

Frank  thought  of  her  own  words  about  journalists' 
wives.  "Oh,"  she  had  said  once,  "it  is  bad  to  be  a  woman 
journalist  .  .  .  but  Heaven  preserve  me  from  being  a 
journalist's  wife !"  That  made  his  heart  sink  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  he  remembered  gloomily  what  Margaret  Hub- 
bard  had  said.  "She  would  never  marry  a  poor  man,  to 
become  a  domestic  drudge  in  a  suburban  household/' 
He  groaned  aloud  and  frightened  the  sparrows  who  were 
making  love  on  the  basin  of  the  splashing  fountain,  and 
startled  a  messenger  boy  in  uniform,  who  was  reading 
a  blood-and-thunder  novelette  on  a  seat  close  to  him,  rest- 
ing no  doubt  on  his  way  with  an  express  letter. 

But  the  groan  was  hollow  and  artificial.  Frank  was 
only  pretending.  At  the  bottom  of  his  heart  there  was  a 
melody  of  gladness,  for  he  remembered  how  Katherine 
had  let  him  kiss  her  outside  the  bedroom  door  of  the 
old  inn  in  Worcestershire,  how  gaily  they  had  gone  ad- 


294  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

venturing1  together,  how  her  eyes  had  softened  when  she 
looked  at  him  across  the  railway  carriage  on  the  way 
home,  how  quickly  she  had  veiled  those  eyes  with  her 
brown  lashes  while  her  cheeks  had  deepened  into  blush- 
roses  at  that  moment.  It  was  impossible  to  despair  with 
such  memories  as  those,  and  after  all  his  reveries  in  which 
he  had  tried  to  look  the  truth  manfully  in  the  face,  and 
to  thrust  down  all  wild  and  wanton  hopes,  he  felt  himself 
buoyed  up  to  the  seventh  heaven  with  a  gladness  that 
was  beyond  all  reason. 

With  his  incurable  shyness  Frank  Luttrell  deliberately 
avoided  Katherine  Halstead  for  several  days.  He  only 
entered  the  reporters'  room  when  he  knew  she  was  not 
there,  and  in  the  mornings  went  straight  to  Vicary  to 
get  his  "assignment,"  and  then  set  forth  on  his  work 
whatever  it  might  be,  writing  his  copy  later  in  his  own 
room  at  Staple  Inn,  and  handing  it  in  to  the  sub-editor 
in  the  evening.  All  this  time  he  was  longing  with  an 
almost  aching  pain  to  be  with  her  again  and  to  speak  the 
words  which  came  silently  to  his  lips  when  he  was  alone. 
Yet  he  shrank  from  his  next  meeting  with  her,  even 
though  he  yearned  for  it.  It  seemed  to  him  that  all  in- 
stincts of  delicacy  and  good  feeling  bade  him  hold  back 
from  too  quick  an  encounter  with  her  after  Codrington's 
confession.  She  would  guess  that  Codrington  had  told 
him,  and  if  he  went  round  to  the  flat  she  would  think 
that  he  had  come  to  take  advantage  of  her  freedom.  So 
he  racked  himself  with  exquisite  agonies  of  self-inflicted 
torture,  from  which  he  derived  that  subtle  pleasure  which 
belonged  to  the  medieval  saints  who  lacerated  themselves 
and  wore  hair  shirts  and  spiked  girdles  for  the  love  of 
God. 

Then  one  evening  he  found  himself  on  the  fourth  floor 
of  the  house  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue.  He  had  not  gone 
there  deliberately.  On  the  contrary  he  had  made  up  his 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  295 

mind  to  write  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  a  work  which 
had  caught  hold  of  his  imagination  in  an  extraordinary 
way  during  the  past  three  weeks,  so  that  it  had  compelled 
him  to  sit  up  half  the  night,  or  several  nights  a  week, 
writing  until  his  fingers  became  numb  and  cramped,  and 
the  fire  had  gone  out  in  the  grate,  and  he  had  awakened 
to  self-consciousness  with  a  shiver.  It  was  curious  how 
he  had  come  to  be  writing  that  story.  He  had  not  sat 
down  deliberately  one  day  and  said  "Go  to.  I  will  write 
a  book."  He  had  finished  an  article  one  night  on  'The 
Relics  of  Old  London."  It  was  for  the  magazine  page 
of  the  Rag.  Then  with  his* pencil  in  his  hand  he  had 
played  about  with  the  next  sheet  of  blank  paper  scribbling 
lines  this  way  and  that,  and  making  grotesque  patterns 
and  designs,  while  his  thoughts  went  straying  to  the  old 
iRectory  where  his  father  would  be  sitting  with  the  lamp 
shade  throwing  a  light  upon  his  book,  or  his  mother  would 
be  knitting,  or  perhaps  playing  the  piano  in  that  quiet 
way  which  used  to  send  his  spirit  into  the  dream  world, 
when  as  a  boy  he  lay  on  the  bearskin  rug,  with  his  hands 
behind  his  head,  staring  up  at  the  oak  beams  across  the 
plastered  ceiling.  In  a  curious  way  he  seemed  to  have 
got  out  of  his  body,  and  to  be  watching  himself  as  he 
was  years  ago.  He  could  see  that  small  boy  with  the 
fair  curling  hair  and  his  white  face,  with  the  old  green- 
covered  copy  of  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales,  which  he  was  not 
reading.  And  Frank  Luttrell,  of  Fleet  Street,  standing 
like  a  ghost  in  the  old  room  by  the  side  of  that  boy  who 
was  once  himself — saw  the  fantastic  dream- fancies  which 
seemed  to  take  form  and  float  to  the  ceiling  as  his 
mother's  white  fingers  went  wandering  over  the  keys. 

Something  prompted  him  unconsciously — the  habit,  no 
doubt,  that  a  journalist  acquires,  of  putting  his  thoughts 
on  to  paper  without  effort — to  write  a  description  of  that 
scene  so  vivid  in  his  imagination — the  picture  of  that 


296  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

home-scene  with  the  clergyman's  wife  at  the  piano  in 
semi-darkness,  dreaming  over  the  notes;  the  handsome, 
ascetic  father  reading  his  Homer  with  his  back  turned 
to  the  table  and  the  shade  of  the  lamp  tilted  so  that  the 
light  fell  upon  his  iron-grey  hair,  and  across  his  shoulder 
on  to  the  book;  the  small  boy  with  his  elbows  dug  into 
the  bearskin  rug,  lying  on  his  stomach  with  the  fairy- 
book  under  his  arm,  and  the  firelight  flickering  upon  him, 
and  scorching  one  side  of  his  face,  and  making  strange, 
fantastic  shadows  on  the  wall.  Every  detail  of  the  old 
scene  came  back  to  Frank's  memory,  or  rather  to  his 
imagination;  for  he  saw  the  image  of  those  things  as 
though  his  eyes  were  looking  at  them  now,  and  he  heard 
the  sounds  that  made  up  the  music  of  his  boyhood — the 
solemn,  rhythmic  beat  of  the  grandfather  clock,  the  rus- 
tling of  the  leaves  of  his  father's  book,  the  purring  of 
the  tabby  cat  whom  as  a  child  he  had  loved  next  to  his 
father  and  mother,  the  brushing  of  a  fir-tree  against  the 
window-pane — a  strange,  ghostly  noise  which  used  to  af- 
fright his  young  soul  when  he  was  left  alone  in  the  room 
— the  hooting  of  screech  owls  in  the  church  tower,  the 
laughter  of  village  boys  and  girls  out  in  the  road,  and, 
throbbing  through  the  room,  those  beautiful,  haunting, 
melting  dream-melodies  played  by  his  mother,  so  that 
they  made  his  thoughts  go  wandering  into  the  elf-land 
of  his  own  dreaming,  in  which  always  he  was  the  hero, 
the  chivalrous  knight,  the  brave  and  handsome  prince, 
the  poor  gallant  journeyman  tailor,  or  the  wandering  min- 
strel, who  rescued  fair  ladies  from  fierce  dragons  and  re- 
ceived, after  many  adventures,  the  reward  of  their  love 
and  beauty. 

When  Frank  had  put  down  this  well-remembered  scene 
and  one  of  the  beautiful  dream-stories  which  had  been 
built  up  to  the  melody  played  by  his  mother  which  now 
came  ringing  into  his  ears,  he  read  over  the  scribbled 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  297 

pages,  smiling,  and  surprised  to  find  that  he  had  written 
them.  It  was  as  though  his  sub-conscious  mind  had  been 
at  work  dictating  the  narrative,  and  that  he  had  awakened 
from  the  dream  of  a  dream  when  the  words  had  been  set 
down  by  invisible  fingers.  At  least,  he  had  not  deliber- 
ately intended  to  write  this  composition,  but  when  he  read 
it  through  he  was  touched  by  the  tenderness  of  the  old 
memory  which  was  so  subtly  and  vividly  evoked.  It  had 
pleased  him  to  go  on  writing,  and  recalling  his  early  im- 
pressions, his  childish  adventures  in  the  Rectory  garden 
when  a  snail  had  looked  as  large  as  a  dragon,  and  down 
by  the  brook  where  he  had  been  scared  by  the  first  sight 
of  a  water-rat — a  monstrous,  ferocious  creature  it  had 
seemed  on  first  acquaintance — which  afterwards  became 
an  old  and  trusty  friend  to  whom  he  delivered  tit-bits 
saved  up  from  his  own  banquets.  He  described  many  of 
these  early  comrades — the  raven  which  his  father  gave 
him  on  his  tenth  birthday  (a  wise  and  cunning  bird  with 
a  grim  sense  of  humour),  and  the  vagabond  dog  of  the 
village,  who  was  no  one's  property  but  everybody's  friend, 
who  would  bring  back  a  rabbit  in  return  for  a  kind  word 
and  a  pat  on  the  head,  and  who  loved  best  of  all  to  go 
for  wild  adventures  with  a  small  boy,  Frank,  to  the  top 
of  the  quarry  hills  which  touched  the  sky.  Then  there 
were  the  rabbits  who,  once,  when  he  lay  down  to  sleep 
in  the  Druids  walk,  sat  round  him  in  a  ring,  taking  him 
perhaps  for  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  and  then  when  he  woke 
up  and  rubbed  his  eyes  scuttled  off  with  bobbing  white 
tails.  He  had  succeeded  after  long  and  patient  vigils  to 
accustom  them  to  his  presence,  and  some  of  them  be- 
came quite  tame  and  would  gambol  round  him  and  eat 
lettuce  leaves  out  of  his  hands.  They  seemed  to  him  like 
furry  gnomes,  and  for  some  of  his  well-known  favourites 
he  had  especial  names  such  as  Nutkin,  and  Puss-in-Boots, 
and  Prince  Peterkin,  and  Little  Brown  Man,  and  Slyf ace. 


298  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

He  used  to  sit  on  a  hummocky  mound  and  tell  stories  to 
them  while  they  fed  on  the  lettuces  which  he  rooted  out 
of  the  kitchen  garden — not  without  arousing  the  wrath 
of  old  Ralph,  who  was  grave-digger  and  gardener  and 
coachman.  Frank  wrote  on  and  on  for  hours  amused 
with  these  childish  recollections,  and  very  much  inter- 
ested in  that  small  boy  who  was  once  himself,  and  then 
he  made  him  grow  up  and  fall  in  love,  and  have  adven- 
tures in  many  phases  of  London  life,  somewhat  like  those 
which  Frank  himself  had  been  through  but  more  romantic 
and  idealised,  and  without  any  connection  with  Fleet 
Street  and  journalism.  It  was  all  half  real  and  half 
imaginary,  a  romantic  autobiography  in  which  he  let  his 
imagination  wander  at  will,  leading  him  into  episodes 
which  had  never  happenecj,  and  in  which  he  was  amused 
to  find  a  fellow  of  his  own  temperament.  It  never  oc- 
curred to  him  that  he  was  writing  for  publication.  If 
that  had  been  in  his  thoughts  he  would  not  have  written 
so  easily,  so  naturally,  with  such  little  concern,  or  with 
such  a  carelessness  in  construction,  and  indifference  to 
public  opinion.  It  was  simply  a  delight  in  self-expres- 
sion which  kept  him  out  of  bed  late  at  night,  writing  in 
his  lonely  room  until  he  was  too  tired  to  write  another 
line.  And  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  chapter, 
as  already  said  before  this  long  parenthesis,  he  bundled 
his  papers  in  a  drawer,  strode  out  into  Holborn  and 
found  that  his  footsteps  led  him  willy-nilly  and  unswerv- 
ingly to  the  flat  on  the  fourth  storey  of  the  house  in 
Shaftesbury  Avenue. 

Margaret  Hubbard  opened  the  door,  and  she  said, 
"Well,  I  never  did !  You  don't  mean  to  say  so !" 

Then  she  took  hold  of  his  coat  lapels  and  pulled  him 
inside.  "Why,  Frank,  I  thought  you  had  deserted  us 
again !" 

Frank  said  that  he  would  never  be  a  deserter  from 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  299 

Mother  Hubbard's  kingdom.  To  whatever  part  of  the 
world  he  might  go  his  footsteps  would  always  come  back 
to  her  roof -tree.  But  he  thought  it  well  to  stay  away 
now  and  again,  he  was  so  afraid  of  wearing  out  her  wel- 
come. 

She  took  off  his  coat  and  laughed  at  him  as  a  foolish 
fellow,  and  pushed  him  in  her  peremptory,  bullying,  mas- 
terful, cheery  way  into  the  drawing-room.  Katherine 
was  there  engulfed  in  a  deep  chair  with  a  book  on  her 
lap.  She  got  up  when  Frank  went  in,  and  said,  "Hulloh, 
Frank/'  in  her  old,  familiar,  comradely  way.  But  her 
face  flushed  ever  so  slightly,  and  she  avoided  his  eyes 
as  they  shook  hands.  Neither  of  them  saw  the  quick 
glance  which  Margaret  gave  to  each  of  them,  nor  the  in- 
finite tenderness  of  the  look  that  came  over  her  square, 
strong,  motherly  face. 

For  half-an-hour  they  talked  "shop,"  and  then  Frank 
told  them  for  the  first  time  of  his  promotion  and  in- 
creased salary.  He  had  hugged  that  secret  to  himself, 
feeling  unaccountably  diffident  in  making  it  known  to  his 
colleagues.  He  knew  that  both  these  women,  though  they 
worked  as  hard  as  he  did,  had  smaller  incomes  than  his 
own  even  when  he  had  started  on  £4  IDS.  a  week. 
Women  were  sweated  in  Fleet  Street,  as  elsewhere.  He 
felt  that  it  was  "beastly  selfish"  of  him  to  be  getting  so 
much  when  they  had  so  little. 

But  he  had  no  need  to  feel  any  uneasiness  on  this 
score.  There  was  no  trace  of  envy  in  Margaret  Hub- 
bard's  voice  when  she  said — 

"Bravo!  Bravo!  .  .  .  Why  that  is  the  best  piece  of 
news  I  have  heard  for  many  a  long  day  I" 

Katherine  sat  up  with  sparkling  eyes,  and  clasped  both 
arms  of  her  chair  as  though  she  had  to  hold  herself  down 
to  restrain  her  excitement. 

"Excellentissime,  Signor  Francesco!    I  can  see  the  day 


300          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

when  you  will  be  a  proud,  rich  man  rolling  around  in  a 
motor-car.  ...  In  a  year  or  two  you  will  be  sitting  aloft 
in  an  editorial  chair,  and  we  shall  have  to  knock  at  your 
door  before  venturing  into  the  high  presence." 

Frank  carried  his  honours  blushingly  and  modestly, 
and  confessed  his  utter  bewilderment  as  to  the  reason  of 
his  good  forune.  But  his  self-depreciation  was  cut  short 
by  Margaret  Hubbard,  who  said  that  if  he  wanted  to 
fish  for  compliments  he  must  go  to  other  waters.  She 
never  pandered  to  a  young  man's  vanity  in  that  way. 
Then  seeing  that  he  was  actually  hurt  by  this  banter  she 
said,  "Frank,  Frank,  when  will  you  harden  that  thin 
skin  of  yours?  A  sensitive  plant  will  never  flourish  in 
Fleet  Street  soil." 

"Mother  Hubbard,"  said  Katherine,  "you  are  a  brutal 
and  cynical  old  woman.  You  do  not  understand  that  a 
sensitive  temperament  is  just  the  very  thing  that  does 
flourish  in  Fleet  Street.  Those  who  get  hardened  never 
get  out  of  the  rut,  but  people  who  put  tenderness  and 
imagination  and  poetry  into  their  work,  like  our  esteemed 
colleague  here,  rise  to  exalted  places  and  become  special 
article  writers,  and  get  to  the  heart  of  the  big  public  so 
that  they  can  dictate  terms  to  editors." 

"Stuff  and  nonsense/'  said  Margaret  Hubbard,  "how 
can  a  man  with  tenderness  dictate  terms  ?  He  is  always 
crushed  by  brutes  without  a  soul." 

Then  she  smiled  over  at  Frank  and  said,  "Make  the 
most  of  your  good  fortune  while  you  have  it,  Frank. 
Remember  that  Fleet  Street  is  a  hilly  country,  with  ups 
and  downs." 

"Is  that  a  warning  ?"  asked  Frank.  "Are  you  going  to 
preach  a  little  sermon  on  the  need  of  thrift  and  the  virtue 
of  saving  up  for  rainy  days  ?" 

"No,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.  She  was  looking  at 
Katherine  rather  than  Frank,  and  said  in  her  quiet  way, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  301 

"If  you  will  allow  an  old  woman  to  give  a  little  word  of 
advice,  I  would  say:  Do  not  wait  too  long  before  you 
buy  happiness.  Do  not  say,  'I  will  wait  till  I  am  really 
well  off  before  I  begin  to  spend/  Buy  as  much  happi- 
ness as  you  can,  now  and  quickly." 

"What  does  the  dear  good  woman  mean  by  that?" 
asked  Katherine. 

"I  speak  in  parables,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.  "Per- 
haps Frank  understands." 

Frank  did  not  quite  understand,  but  he  had  a  dim  idea 
of  Mother  Hubbard's  meaning,  and  it  made  him  silent 
and  thoughtful  for  a  few  moments. 

Then  he  looked  up  and  said — 

"Anyhow,  I  would  like  to  celebrate  the  occasion,  don't 
you  know.  I  wonder  if  you  would  come  to  a  tea-party  in 
Staple  Inn?  Neither  of  you  has  been  inside  my  rooms, 
and  it  is  about  time  I  had  a  house-warming.  I  can  prom- 
ise tea  and  muffins,  and  my  black  kitten  will  play  merry 
games  with  you,  and  we  will  have  a  box  at  the  theatre 
afterwards." 

"I  would  love  to  see  your  den,"  said  Katherine  quickly, 
and  Margaret  said  that  settled  it,  because  she  would  have 
to  go  as  chaperone.  She  looked  shyly  at  Katherine  and 
then  said,  "Well,  I  will  leave  you  two  to  fix  the  date.  I 
am  going  out." 

"Going  out  ?"  said  Katherine,  with  a  surprise  in  which 
there  was  a  trace  of  alarm.  "Where,  for  goodness'  sake  ?" 

"Quite  so — for  goodness'  sake,"  said  Margaret  Hub- 
bard.  She  stood  at  the  door  for  a  moment  looking  back 
at  them,  with  a  curious,  wondering,  smiling  glance  and 
then  left  the  room,  and  a  moment  later  Frank  heard  the 
hall  door  close  behind  her,  quietly. 

An  awkward,  embarrassed  silence  took  possession  of 
the  drawing-room.  It  was  the  first  time  Frank  and  Kath- 


302  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

erine  had  been  alone  together  since  that  evening  in 
Worcestershire. 

Katherine  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"I  am  very  glad  to  hear  of  your  good  luck/'  she  said. 
"But  it  is  more  than  good  luck.  You  have  worked  for  it." 

"Not  more  than  the  others,"  said  Frank.  "Not  like 
you,  Katherine.  You  are  the  best  journalist  I  have  ever 
met.  I  shall  never  forget  that  adventure  at  the  palace  of 
the  king  in  exile." 

Katherine  laughed  rather  nervously. 

"Perhaps  some  incidents  of  that  adventure  ought  to  be 
forgotten." 

She  screened  her  face  from  the  fire  which  seemed  to 
burn  her  cheeks. 

Frank  said  that  every  minute  of  that  adventure  from 
the  moment  they  had  got  into  the  train  at  Paddington 
was  worth  remembering. 

Katherine  avoided  the  issue  which  seemed  inconvenient 
to  her  by  asking  whether  he  did  not  find  it  rather  too 
mild  for  the  time  of  year.  She  asked  that  important 
question  as  if  she  were  seriously  interested  in  the  answer. 
Frank  found  that  for  conversational  purposes  it  was  well 
to  disagree  with  her,  and  gave  his  decided  opinion  that 
the  spring  sunshine  was  delightful.  They  discussed  the 
matter  for  quite  three  minutes  and  then  the  conversation 
languished,  and  flickered  out. 

Katherine  seemed  to  be  a  little  uneasy  and  restless. 
She  crossed  over  to  the  piano  and  played  a  few  bars  of 
Handel.  It  was  the  "Lascio  qu'i  o  pianga,"  and  rshe 
played  it  with  tenderness. 

"Go  on,"  said  Frank,  "my  mother  used  to  play  that. 
You  have  no  idea  how  I  miss  the  old  tunes." 

Katherine  said,  "I  can't  play!"  and  then  contradicted 
herself  by  playing  Mendelssohn's  Minnelied  with  a  light 
and  beautiful  touch.  Frank  sat  on  a  low  stool  behind 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  303 

her,  with  his  hands  on  his  knees.  The  melody  which  he 
had  heard  years  ago  and  had  remembered  crept  into 
his -ears  and  then  carried  his  soul  away  on  one  of  those 
winged  flights  by  which  he  had  been  lifted  up  as  a  small 
boy.  His  spirit  went  wandering  into  the  dream-world. 
He  was  with  Katherine  hand-in-hand  walking  through  a 
wood.  The  sun  was  glinting  through  the  trees  and  span- 
gling her  white  dress  with  gold.  He  plucked  flowers  for 
her,  and  she  stooped  before  him,  smiling,  and  he  crowned 
her  with  them.  Then  some  brambles  caught  her  dress, 
and  they  pricked  his  fingers  as  he  pulled  them  away, 
and  a  little  drop  of  blood  on  one  of  his  fingers  stained 
her  white  gown.  .  .  .  They  wandered  on  and  came  to  a 
hut  and  she  said,  "Let  us  go  in  and  make  a  little  home 
here  in  the  woods."  But  she  looked  at  him  roguishly, 
and  then  ran  away  laughing  through  a  vista  of  trees, 
and  he  followed  breathlessly,  and  could  never  catch  her 
up,  until  suddenly  she  stopped  and  turned  and  stretched 
out  her  arms  to  him,  and  every  flower  in  the  wood  began 
to  ring  with  silvery  bells  and — Katherine  stopped  playing 
the  piano  and  the  dream  came  to  an  end. 

He  stood  up  and  spoke  her  name  in  a  queer  voice. 

She  had  gone  away  from  the  piano  and  stood  facing 
him.  When  he  spoke  she  seemed  a  little  frightened,  and 
the  colour  faded  from  her  face. 

Frank  went  toward  her.  He  was  whiter  than  she  was 
and  his  voice  faltered. 

"Katherine,"  he  said,  "Codrington  told  me " 

The  colour  flooded  back  to  her  face. 

"Yesv  .  .  What  did  he  tell  you?" 

"He  told  me  that  you  and  he — that  you " 

He  could  get  no  further,  and  Katherine  did  not  help 
him. 

"That  I?"  she  said,  with  her  eyes  studying  the  rose- 
pattern  on  the  carpet. 


304          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Frank  took  both  her  hands  and  lifted  them  up  to  his 
heart,  and  said  very  humbly — 

"Katherine,  would  it  be  playing  the  game  if  I  were  to 
ask  you  to  be  my  wife  ?" 

She  swayed  a  little  as  he  held  her  hands,  and  then 
said,  "Oh,  Frank,  do  not  ask  me  .  .  .  please,  please.  .  .  . 
I  don't  think  it  is  quite  playing  the  game." 

She  took  her  hands  away  from  him  and  went  over  to 
the  fireplace,  and,  clasping  the  mantelpiece,  put  her  face 
down  on  her  hands  and  cried. 

Frank  wanted  to  take  the  hands  away  from  the  tearful 
face  so  that  he  might  kiss  her.  Of  course  he  should  have 
done  so ;  but  he  stood  abashed  and  motionless  in  the  cen- 
tre of  the  room  and  stared  at  the  girl  with  grave,  won- 
dering eyes. 

"I'm  beastly  sorry,"  he  said.  "I  didn't  want  to  be  a 
cad.  I  only  wanted  to  tell  you  that  I  love  you.  It  sounds 
stupid,  and  all  that,  but  I  can  truly  say  that  I  love  you 
with  my  whole  heart  and  soul.  .  .  .  Katherine,  I  am  red- 
hot  for  you !  I  have  never  loved  any  other  woman ;  and 
it  was  all  very  strange  and  glorious  and  wonderful  when 

I  thought,  perhaps — don't  you  know  ?  But,  of  course . 

Well,  I'm  not  such  a  stupid,  selfish  rotter " 

She  turned,  and,  though  her  eyes  were  wet  with  tears, 
she  laughed  at  him  as  though  he  were  irresistibly  comical. 

"Frank  .  .  .  what  a  boy  you  are !  .  .  .  Why  are  you  so 
humble  and  meek?" 

She  mopped  her  eyes  with  her  handkerchief  and  said, 
"Oh,  oh,  what  children,  we  are,  both  of  us !" 

"It's  rather  jolly  to  be  kids,"  said  Frank,  "isn't  it?  We 
could  have  such  good  times  together,  you  and  I,  Kath- 
erine. We  would  be  children  all  the  time,  and  go  through 
all  sorts  of  wonderful  adventures,  and  play  at  make- 
believe  behind  the  drawn  blinds,  if  the  world  outside  were 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  305 

rather  stupid,  and  make  a  doll's  house  for  ourselves  in 
some  respectable  suburb " 

"Hush  I"  said  Katherine.    "Hush !  you  mustn't !" 

She  was  smiling  at  him  again,  and  mopping  her  eyes 
like  a  girl  who  has  had  "a  good  cry"  and  rather  enjoyed  it. 

"Why  mustn't  I  ?"  said  Frank.  He  was  not  feeling  so 
horribly  depressed,  and  had  a  little  more  courage.  "Why 
did  you  let  me  kiss  you  in  the  old  inn  at  Worcestershire?" 

"It  was  very  wrong  of  me,"  said  Katherine  seriously. 
"I  can't  think  how  I  could  have  been  so — so  very  wicked." 

"You  were  very  good,"  said  Frank.  "I  have  been 
in  heaven  ever  since." 

Katherine  said  she  wanted  him  to  be  very  unselfish  and 
very  patient,  and  she  begged  him  not  to  say  rash  things. 
She  was  glad,  she  said,  that  Codrington  had  told  him — 
what  had  happened.  That  had  cleared  the  air  a  little. 
She  had  been  in  a  very  false  position.  But  he  must  see 
that  some  time  must  go  by  before  she  could — could  de- 
cently and  honourably  make  any  other  engagement  of  the 
kind.  It  would  be  like  a  widow  who  rushes  into  matri- 
mony before  her  husband's  corpse  is  cold.  Chris  had 
behaved  very  nobly  and  unselfishly;  and,  besides — she 
owed  it  to  Frank  himself  not  to  let  him  make  any  rash 
promises.  Of  course  she  had  been  very  wrong.  She  had 
let  him  see  that  she  cared  for  him " 

"Good  God!"  said  Frank.  "Then  you  do  care  for 
me?" 

He  went  down  on  his  knees  in  quite  an  old-fashioned 
way  and  put  his  arms  round  her  waist  and  took  one  of 
her  hands  and  kissed  it. 

"Katherine ;  I  believe  you  really  love  me !" 

"Of  course  I  do,"  she  said,  pulling  his  head  to  her 
breast  and  touching  his  hair  with  her  lips.  "I  loved  you 
from  the  first  moment  I  saw  you." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Frank,  kneeling  straight  up  and  star- 


306          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

ing  at  her  with  a  kind  of  joyous  amazement,  "in  heaven's 
name  why  can't  we ?" 

"Frank,  Frank,"  she  said,  "I  am  not  going  to  promise 
anything  just  yet.  ...  I  want  a  little  time  to  think.  I 
am  not  good  enough  for  you.  I  have  been  thinking  that 
I  should  make  you  very  unhappy.  You  don't  know  how 
wicked  I  am." 

"Unhappy?  Wicked?  Why,  I  am  deliriously  happy 
already ;  and  you  are  so  good  that  I  tremble  at  the  thought 
of  my  rotten,  foolish,  weak  unworthiness." 

"You  don't  understand,"  said  Katherine.  "My  poor 
boy,  you  don't  understand!" 

When  he  begged  her  to  explain  she  took  his  hand  and 
fondled  it,  and  said  it  was  wonderful  to  her  that  he  could 
think  twice  about  such  a  girl. 

But  he  did  not  know  her.  He  had  made  a  kind  of 
shining  white  angel  of  her — she  had  seen  that  in  his  eyes 
— and  it  was  so  very  far  from  the  real  truth.  There  was 
a  legion  of  black  imps  in  her  heart — restlessness  and  bit- 
terness and  discontent  and  revolt  and  ambition.  Yes,  she 
must  confess  all  that.  She  would  never  make  a  good 
wife  to  any  man,  but  least  of  all  to  a  poor  one.  Of  course 
she  was  a  fool — but  she  could  never  bear  to  give  up  her 
work  and  Fleet  Street  and  the  slavery  which  she  called 
liberty.  It  had  got  hold  of  her,  and  she  could  never  es- 
cape from  it  and  settle  down  in  domestic  drudgery,  to 
wash  up  tea-cups,  and  have  an  "At-Home"  on  first  and 
second  Thursdays,  and  knit  her  husband's  socks,  and  get 
into  a  narrow,  miserable  groove. 

"By  the  Lord !"  said  Frank,  "I  would  never  ask  you  to 
rdo  that.  You  need  not  give  up  your  work,  Katherine. 
We  would  work  together  instead  of  alone." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"All  journalists  say  that  to  the  women  of  their  own 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  307 

profession.  But  it  doesn't  work.  Babies  and  things  have 
a  habit  of  coming,  you  know/' 

"By  Jove !  so  they  do !"  said  Frank.  "But  isn't  that 
rather  jolly?" 

"Oh,  I  dare  say  it  would  be  amusing  for  a  little  while, 
but  afterwards  the  woman  gets  so  tired  of  it  all — women 
like  me,  I  mean  .  .  .  selfish,  restless  creatures,  who  have 
got  the  poison  of  Fleet  Street  in  their  blood." 

Frank  was  silent,  stupefied.  He  was  trying  to  think 
out  some  answer  to  his  problem,  but  his  ideas  were 
clogged,  and  he  could  only  sit  dumb  and  miserable. 

"You  see  how  wicked  I  am,"  said  Katherine,  rather 
triumphantly  at  having  demonstrated  the  fact  beyond  all 
argument.  "I  am  one  of  those  very  women  whom  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  and  other  great  preachers  are  inveighing 
against.  I  shirk  the  responsibilities  of  married  life.  I 
compete  with  men  on  sweated  wages.  I  am  a  disgrace  to 
my  sex.  I  am  one  of  the  tendencies  of  the  modern  age. 
.  .  .  How  awful  to  be  a  tendency !" 

She  laughed  a  little  hysterically,  but  it  was  a  laugh  in 
which  there  was  the  bitterness  of  truth. 

"I  know  I  ought  to  be  whipped  ...  I  am  no  longer  a 
child.  I  have  read  Bernard  Shaw  and  other  people.  I 
know  perfectly  well  that  I  have  behaved  shamefully  to 
you,  my  poor  Frank,  leading  you  on,  enticing  you,  throw- 
ing myself  at  your  head,  and  then  denying  what  you 
want — because  I  am  afraid  of  marriage.  That  is  the  way 
with  so  many  professional  women,  poor  wretches !  and  it 
is  hard  on  the  men." 

"Yes,"  said  Frank.    "It  is  deuced  rough  on  them." 

"Of  course  the  women  can't  help  behaving  like  that. 
They  are  what  the  ha'penny  papers  call  'creatures  of  cir- 
cumstance/ It  is  very  wrong  of  them;  but  the  whole 
world  has  got  askew,  and  we  want  somebody  or  some- 
thing to  come  and  put  it  straight  again." 


308  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Meanwhile,"  said  Frank,  "what  am  I  going  to  do  ?" 

He  asked  the  question  quite  simply,  just  like  a  man 
who  has  got  into  a  very  difficult  and  desperate  situation 
and  looks  round  for  advice. 

The  directness  of  the  question,  perhaps  also  the  look 
of  blank  misery  on  that  handsome  boy's  face,  disturbed 
Katherine  Halstead  uncomfortably. 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  wringing  her  hands  rather  piteously, 
"I  am  a  wretch !  I  am  a  wretch !  .  .  .  Why  did  you  come 
to  the  Rag.  Frank  ?  Why  didn't  you  go  to  some  one  else's 
Rag?" 

"I  think  it  was  due  to  Philip  Gibbs,  who  gave  me  the 
introduction  to  Bellamy.  I  must  thank  him  for  that.  .  .  . 
Just  fancy,  but  for  that  letter  of  introduction  I  should 
never  have  met  you,  Katherine,  and  now  to  feel  that  Fate 
meant  us  for  each  other  from  the  beginning  of  time." 

He  was  so  serious,  so  grave,  that  Katherine  became 
ashamed  of  her  cruelty,  as  she  certainly  had  every  right 
to  be.  She  took  his  hand  again  and  caressed  it,  and  said 
in  a  low  voice,  "Frank,  you  are  too  good  for  me.  I  could 
never  live  up  to  your  ideal." 

And  just  then  Margaret  Hubbard  stood  in  the  door- 
way. 

"Good  gracious!"  she  said.  "What  is  this?  Holding 
hands  in  the  twilight !  I  can't  allow  that  sort  of  thing  in 
a  respectable  household." 

She  laughed  softly,  and  came  across  the  room  and  stood 
behind  Frank's  chair  with  her  hands  on  his  shoulders. 
.  "Has  anything  happened  since  I  have  been  away?" 
she  asked,  in  a  tremulous  voice. 

"No,  nothing,"  said  Katherine,  blushing  very  deeply. 
"How  absurd  you  are,  Mother  Hubbard !  Did  you  expect 
the  devil  to  come  down  the  chimney  on  a  broomstick  ?" 

"No,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.  "I  expected  to  play 
fairy  godmother  to  two  babes  in  the  wood." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  309 

"You  always  do  that,  Mother  Hubbard,"  sai3  Frank. 
Then  he  rose  and  said,  "I  must  be  going." 

Margaret  Hubbard  looked  at  his  white,  grave  face,  and 
then  over  at  Katherine. 

"I  am  afraid  I  shall  have  to  give  some  one  a  severe 
talking  to,"  she  said,  quite  seriously. 

"You  mean  me,  of  course,"  said  Katherine. 

"Yes,  I  mean  you,  Miss  Kitty.  This  is  a  pretty  kettle 
of  fish,  and  I'll  know  the  reason  why,  or  I'm  a  Dutch- 
man." 

Frank  laughed  in  a  rather  melancholy  way,  and  then 
got  his  overcoat  from  the  hall  and  said  good-bye.  Mar- 
garet Hubbard  was  off-hand  with  him.  She  said  she  was 
most  annoyed  with  two  stupid  children,  and  she  would 
not  go  to  the  door  with  him.  So  Katherine  followed 
Frank  into  the  hall,  and  at  the  door  she  said  rather  shyly, 
"There  is  no  reason  to  be  so  very  downhearted,  Frank." 

When  he  shook  hands  with  her  she  bent  forward  a 
little  with  an  invitation  he  was  quick  to  accept.  He  put 
his  arms  round  her  for  one  moment  and  kissed  her  on 
the  lips. 

Then  he  went  out  and  she  shut  the  door  behind  him 
softly,  and  he  wondered  whether  he  was  immensely  happy 
or  immensely  miserable.  It  was  a  curious  state  of  mind 
for  any  young  man. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

THREE  weeks  had  gone  by  since  Luttrell  had  said  good- 
bye to  Peg  in  the  Batter  sea  Park  flat  on  the  night  before 
Brandon's  return  from  the  murder  trial.  She  had  gone 
suddenly  out  of  his  life  as  she  had  come  suddenly  into  it, 
and  he  had  so  many  emotions  of  his  own  that  he  could 
not  afford  much  time  for  thinking  of  that  extraordinary 
girl  and  of  her  poor  tortured  spirit.  For  he  had  some- 
times remembered  with  a  rather  "creepy"  sensation  the 
dreadful  moment  when  in  a  wild  hysterical  cry  she  had 
made  a  passionate  appeal  to  him,  and  said  things  which 
he  had  tried  to  forget.  As  it  often  happens  in  Fleet 
Street,  Brandon  and  he,  though  belonging  to  the  same 
office,  had  not  met  for  more  than  a  few  minutes  since  his 
return.  Frank  had  been  very  busy  inside  and  outside  the 
office,  and  Brandon  had  as  usual  been  diving  into  his  queer 
haunts  for  the  tragic  stories  which  were  his  special  line 
of  business.  The  only  conversation  they  had  had  on  the 
subject  of  Peg  was  when  Brandon  had  come  up  to  him 
and  with  a  hard  hand-grip  said,  "I  am  deeply  obliged  to 
you,  Luttrell."  Frank  said,  "Not  at  all,  Brandon,"  and 
then,  after  a  moment's  hesitation:  "I  want  to  have  a 
serious  talk  with  you.  I  can't  help  feeling  that  you  are 
doing  quite  the  wrong  thing  by — by  that  girl."  Brandon 
gave  him  a  quick  glance  of  surprise  and  said,  "Think  so? 
...  By  all  means,  let  us  talk  it  out.  I  should  value  your 
advice."  But  then  they  had  been  interrupted  by  Vicary, 
who  sent  Frank  away  to  interview  a  cowboy  baronet  from 
Australia,  and  the  opportunity  for  discussion  had  not  yet 
come.  It  was  not  likely  to  come  for  a  few  days  at  least, 

310 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  311 

because,  as  Luttrell  heard  from  Codrington,  Brandon  had 
been  sent  into  the  country  again  on  some  crime  story 
which  had  not  yet  found  its  way  into  print.  Frank's 
thoughts  went  straight  to  that  flat  in  Battersea  Park 
which  held  the  unfortunate  girl  to  whom  Brandon's  going 
away  was  always  a  misery.  No  doubt  Brandon  had 
rushed  off  in  a  hurry  or  he  would  have  said  something, 
or  left  a  message. 

Frank  was  deeply  perplexed.  He  felt  that  he  ought 
to  go  round  and  see  the  girl,  but  he  shrank  from  it  with 
something  like  fear.  Already  he  had  suffered  on  account 
of  his  good-nature.  He  would  not  soon  forget  that  mau- 
vais  quart  d'heure  when  he  had  to  parry  Katherine's  ques- 
tions in  a  disingenuous  way  which  was  hateful  to  him, 
and  Peg's  extraordinary  ignorance  of  the  conventional 
moral  code  was  not  only  fearfully  embarrassing,  but  dan- 
gerous. These  thoughts  stirred  him  exceedingly,  and 
after  deciding  that  he  would  cut  himself  adrift  from  an 
acquaintance  which,  after  all,  was  not  of  his  making,  he 
decided,  with  a  swift  inconsistency,  to  go  round  and  see 
how  Peg  was  getting  on.  His  nature  would  not  allow 
him  to  leave  the  girl  to  go  to  the  devil  because  it  was 
inconvenient  to  him  to  give  her  a  word  of  help  and 
advice.  But  he  would  have  to  postpone  that  visit  until 
the  next  day  at  least.  He  had  arranged  with  Margaret 
Hubbard,  who  accepted  on  behalf  of  Katherine  and  her- 
self, that  the  celebration  of  his  promotion  should  take 
place  that  evening.  They  were  coming  at  six  o'clock  to 
his  rooms  at  Staple  Inn,  and  he  had  already  engaged  a 
box  for  Lohengrin.  Obviously  he  could  not  put  off  such 
a  red-letter  event  in  his  career.  He  had  not  seen  Kath- 
erine since  the  strange  and  stirring  conversation  that 
had  taken  place  between  them  three  nights  before.  Their 
separate  work  had  brought  them  to  the  office  at  different 
hours,  and  he  had  been  excited  by  alternate  moods  of 


312  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

joy  and  despair  when  he  thought — as  he  did  every  minute 
of  the  day  except  when  he  forced  his  brain  to  write  his 
copy  for  the  paper — of  Katherine's  surprising,  torturing, 
bewitching  and  unreasonable  behaviour.  He  resolved,  at 
least,  to  adopt  her  advice  and  not  be  too  "downhearted." 
At  least  this  gala  night  should  be  ever-memorable  and 
joyful. 

By  good  luck  things  were  slack  at  the  office,  and  Frank 
was  able  to  get  away  in  the  afternoon  to  superintend  the 
decorations  of  his  room. 

He  bought  a  wonderful  bouquet  of  white  flowers.  It 
cost  him  ten  shillings  in  Covent  Garden,  and  when  he  car- 
ried it  wrapped  up  in  blue  paper  along  Holborn  to  Staple 
Inn  people  turned  round  attracted  by  the  perfume  of 
arum  lilies  and  lilies  of  the  valley  which  trailed  an  incense 
behind  him  as  he  walked.  He  wondered  whether  the  few 
vases  and  tumblers  in  his  rooms  would  be  sufficient  to  dis- 
play the  beauty  of  these  flowers,  so  that  his  barely-fur- 
nished chambers  might  be  made  fragrant  and  decorated 
for  Katherine's  coming.  It  seemed  to  him  almost  too 
good  to  be  true  that  in  a  little  while  she  would  be  sitting 
in  his  one  arm-chair  in  the  room  where  he  had  spent  so- 
many  lonely  hours,  thinking  and  dreaming  of  her.  Once, 
in  the  late  evening,  she  had  seemed  to  sit  in  that  chair, 
as  a  spiritual  presence,  evoked  by  his  imagination.  Now 
she  would  be  there  in  her  beauty  of  flesh  and  blood,  and 
he  would  hear  her  laughter,  and  her  words  of  comment 
upon  his  books  and  pictures  and  poor  treasures.  The 
thought  filled  him  with  nervousness  as  well  as  with  joy.  A 
girl  like  Katherine  would  see  many  faults  in  this  small 
kingdom  of  his.  He  knew  that  his  books  were  too  dusty. 
They  would  begrime  her  fingers  if  she  touched  them. 
There  was  a  hole  in  his  carpet  where  he  had  dropped  his 
cigarette  one  night  when  he  dozed  off  to  sleep  in  front 
of  the  fire,  waking  with  the  smouldering  smell  in  his  nos- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  313 

trils.  His  prints  and  sketches  were  tacked  up  anyhow  on 
the  walls.  The  shelves  were  littered  with  pipes  and  rub- 
bish. It  was  a  poor  place  in  which  to  receive  his  prin- 
cess; but  perhaps  her  kindness  would  overlook  all  these 
things,  and  the  flowers  would  hide  some  of  the  ugly  cor- 
ners. Then,  too,  he  had  engaged  the  services  of  a  young 
charwoman  with  a  bright  Irish  face  and  a  cheery  way 
of  dealing  with  dirt.  She  had  promised  to  make  every- 
thing as  spick  and  span  as  might  be,  to  have  a  bright  fire 
burning  in  the  sitting-room,  to  get  the  tea-things  ready 
and  to  toast  the  muffins.  Upon  her  fidelity  and  good  sense 
depended  the  success  of  the  first  part  of  the  evening's 
programme,  which  was  to  include  Lohengrin  and  a  little 
supper  in  Soho. 

Frank  sprang  up  the  old  spiral  staircase  to  his  rooms 
with  an  excitement  which  made  his  pulse  thump  to  a  gay 
tune.  He  opened  his  door  with  his  latch-key,  and 
whistled  a  bar  of  The  Harmonious  Blacksmith  as  he  hung 
up  his  hat  in  the  hall.  He  could  already  smell  the  toast- 
ing muffins.  Molly  was  doing  her  duty ! 

But  Molly  came  out  into  the  passage  with  a  rather 
flushed  face. 

"Sure,  an'  there's  one  of  the  young  women  come  al- 
ready," she  said  in  a  whisper,  jerking  her  thumb  towards 
the  sitting-room. 

"Surely  not!" 

"She  don't  look  very  well,  poor  thing.  She  struck  me 
as  very  queer,  entirely." 

Frank  was  startled.  It  was  already  an  hour  before 
the  time  when  he  expected  Katherine  and  Margaret  Hub- 
bard,  and  he  had  to  get  into  evening  dress.  Perhaps 
something  had  happened.  Perhaps  Katherine  had  come 
to  say  that  Vicary  wanted  her  for  an  evening  engage- 
ment. His  heart  sank  with  the  horror  of  the  thought. 
Was  the  gala  night  to  be  spoilt  after  all? 


314  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

He  strode  into  the  sitting-room,  prepared  to  meet  his 
fate  like  a  man.  But  instead  of  Katherine  Halstead  he 
saw  another  girl,  and  at  the  sight  of  her  he  stood  still  in 
amazement.  It  was  Brandon's  "Peg." 

She  was  in  a  black  dress,  with  a  big  black  picture  hat, 
beneath  which  her  face  was  a  dead  white.  Her  eyes  were 
swollen  with  weeping  and  there  were  dark  rims  round 
them.  She  was  sitting  huddled  up  on  the  window  seat 
with  her  elbows  on  the  ledge  and  her  pointed  chin  propped 
in  the  palm  of  her  hand,  and  she  was  staring  down  upon 
the  swirling  traffic  in  Holborn. 

"Good  heavens,  Peg!"  said  Frank.  "What  are  you 
doing  here?" 

At  the  sound  of  his  voice  she  started  up  and  came 
towards  him,  with  her  hands  outstretched,  groping  for- 
ward in  a  blind  kind  of  way.  She  seized  hold  of  one  of 
his  hands,  and  raising  it  to  her  face  as  she  bent  over  it, 
burst  into  tears,  saying,  "Frank!  Frank!"  in  a  hoarse 
whisper,  with  strange  little  moans. 

Frank  was  more  thoroughly  frightened  than  he  had 
ever  been  in  his  life  before.  As  Peg  raised  her  tear- 
stained  face  and  put  one  hand  on  his  shoulder,  leaning  for- 
ward as  though  she  would  lay  her  head  upon  his  breast, 
her  breath  came  into  his  nostrils  with  a  faint  pungent 
odour.  It  was  the  smell  of  brandy. 

"Sit  down,  Peg,"  he  said,  thrusting  her  away  with  his 
arm,  almost  roughly,  as  she  came  close  to  him  again  with 
her  groping,  clinging  hands.  "What  have  you  come  here 
for?" 

"Oh,  my  Gord!  You  are  angry  with  me.  Don't  be 
angry  with  me,  Frank.  I've  been  suffering  that  awful." 

She  raised  her  hands  to  her  head  and  pressed  her 
temples  and  moaned. 

"Be  quiet,"  said  Frank.  "Don't  you  understand? — I 
can't  have  any  scene  here." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  315 

He  went  to  the  door  and  called  out,  "Molly,  are  you 
there?"  The  girl  answered,  and  he  told  her  to  go  home 
now  as  he  would  not  want  her  any  more.  He  could  do 
all  the  rest  himself.  "I'm  just  a-going,  sir,"  said  the  girl. 
"The  kettle's  a-biling  and  the  muffins  are  done  to  a 
turn." 

"That's  all  right.  Thanks  very  much,  and  now  be  off 
like  a  good  girl." 

A  moment  later  the  latch  of  the  front  door  snapped. 
Frank  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief.  He  and  Peg  were 
alone.  If  there  was  to  be  a  "scene"  no  one  would  hear. 
He  must  get  her  away  before  Katherine  and  Margaret 
came.  Good  Lord ! — Supposing  they  came  when  she  was 
here? 

Peg  had  sank  back  into  his  arm-chair  and  had  pulled  off 
her  black  hat,  and  let  it  fall  on  the  floor  by  her  side.  Her 
hair  was  all  touzled,  and  she  pressed  it  back  from  her 
forehead.  Her  eyes  were  half-closed  and  she  was  giving 
little  fluttering  moans. 

Frank  stood  looking  at  her,  and  even  at  that  moment 
he  was  struck  by  this  girl's  strange  beauty,  and  once 
again,  as  on  the  night  at  Battersea  Park,  his  anger 
changed  to  pity.  Frank  Was  a  boy,  with  natural  instincts 
of  chivalry  towards  women,  and  even  to  this  woman 
who  had  come  to  disturb  his  happiness,  and  who  had  been 
drinking,  he  could  not  be  unkind.  Perhaps  there  was  a 
strain  of  weakness  in  him  where  women  were  concerned. 

"Peg,  what  is  the  matter  ?  Tell  me,  why  have  you  come 
here?" 

She  sat  up,  clasping  the  arms  of  the  chair  and  looked 
round  in  a  dazed  way. 

"For  the  love  of  Gord,"  she  said,  "give  me  something 
to  drink."  She  put  her  tongue  on  to  her  parched  lips  and 
whispered,  "Brandy,  brandy!" 

"My  poor  Peg,"  said  Frank.    "You  have  been  drinking 


316  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

already.  ...  I  have  no  brandy  and  I  would  not  give  you 
any  if  I  had." 

She  -moaned  out  that  her  head  was  on  fire,  that  she  must 
have  something  to  drink  or  she  would  die.  She  looked 
really  ill.  Her  eyes  were  dull  and  glazed,  and  her  high 
cheek-bones  were  touched  with  colour  as  vivid  as  ver- 
milion. Her  long  white  fingers  fluttered  at  her  throat,  as 
though  she  were  choking. 

Frank  knew  little  about  women,  but  he  was  suddenly 
overpowered  by  the  fear  that  this  girl  was  dying.  He 
cried  to  her  in  a  stifled  voice  to  stay  quietly  while  he 
made  her  some  tea.  Then  he  strode  out  into  the  tiny 
room  in  which  there  was  a  gas-stove.  It  was  really  a 
box-room,  but  he  used  it  as  a  china-cupboard,  scullery 
and  kitchen.  The  kettle  was  boiling  its  heart  out  on  the 
stove,  and  the  tea-things  were  all  ready.  The  muffins 
which  Molly  had  toasted  lay  on  the  rack,  beautifully 
brown. 

He  poured  some  boiling  water  into  the  tea-pot.  Molly 
had  already  put  the  tea  in.  Then  he  carried  it  on  the 
tray  into  the  next  room. 

"This  will  do  you  good,"  he  said,  with  the  horrible 
cheerfulness  that  men  and  women  have  when  they  are 
waiting  on  sick  people. 

One  of  the  girl's  hands  flopped  limply  on  to  the  arm  of 
the  chair  and  she  said,  "Oh,  my  good  Gord !"  in  a  helpless, 
piteous  way. 

Frank  poured  out  a  cup  of  tea  and  put  enough  milk 
in  it  to  cool  it  a  little.  His  brain  was  working  very 
clearly  and  his  hand  did  not  tremble,  but  he  was  filled  with 
the  cold  terror  of  a  man  in  the  middle  of  some  uncanny 
and  horrible  predicament. 

"Now  take  some  of  this.  I  insist,  Peg,  and  you  know 
I  am  a  very  strong-willed  person." 

He  spoke  in  the  half-humorous,  half-authoritative  way 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  317 

in  which  he  used  to  talk  to  her  sometimes  at  Battersea 
Park.  The  words  seemed  to  recall  her  to  her  senses  some- 
what, and  she  stretched  out  a  hand  to  take  the  cup.  But  it 
shook  as  though  she  had  the  ague,  and  Frank  was  obliged 
to  put  the  cup  to  her  lips.  She  gulped  down  some  of  the 
steaming  liquid  and  then  gave  a  convulsive  shudder.  But 
in  a  moment  or  two  a  warmth  of  colour  spread  over  her 
face,  and  her  eyes  were  not  so  glazed. 

"Now  then,"  said  Frank,  "y°u  feel  better,  don't  you?" 

She  lifted  his  hand  and  put  it  on  the  arm  of  the  chair 
and  stroked  it. 

"You've  always  been  very  good  to  me.  That's  what  I 
call  being  a  real  pal.  You've  never  been  down  on  md, 
Frank.  I  knew  if  I  could  only  get  here,  you'd  be  that 
kind." 

"Why  did  you  come  here?  What  on  earth  are  you 
here  for?" 

She  sat  up  and  looked  at  him  rather  wildly. 

"Bill's  gone  away  again.  I  couldn't  stand  it  no  longer. 
...  All  alone  in  that  flat.  ...  It  gave  me  the  'errors 
.  .  .  and  then  I  began  to  drink." 

"That  was  the  worst  thing  you  could  do,  Peg.  The 
very  worst." 

"And  I'm  never  going  back  no  more." 

She  spoke  the  words  sullenly  at  first  and  then  repeated 
them  with  an  hysterical  laugh.  "I'm  never  going  back 
no  more." 

Those  words  came  to  Frank's  ears  as  though  he  had 
been  struck  with  a  blow.  He  looked  at  the  clock.  Nearly 
half-an-hour  had  gone  by,  and  in  another  quarter  of  an 
hour  Katherine  and  Margaret  would  come.  He  must  get 
the  girl  away  at  once.  It  would  never  do  for  them  to 
find  her  here — this  extraordinary  girl,  who  was  still  obvi- 
ously intoxicated — alone  with  him  in  his  rooms.  What 
would  Katherine  think  ?  She  had  already  been  suspicious 


3i8  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

of  the  unknown  girl,  and  then  had  forgotten  her.  But 
how  could  he  explain  her  presence  here  ?  He  had  given 
his  word  of  honour  to  Brandon  to  keep  this  story  secret. 
As  a  man  of  honour  he  was  bound  by  that  pledge  to  a 
friend.  It  would  be  horrible  if  Katherine  came ! 

"Peg,"  he  said  sternly.  "You  must  go  back  at  once. 
I  will  fetch  a  cab  for  you." 

He  went  towards  the  door,  but  the  girl  rose  with  a 
strangled  cry  and  clutched  him  by  the  arm. 

"No !"  she  cried.  "I'll  never  go  back,  so  'elp  me  Gord, 
I  won't!" 

She  put  her  arms  round  him  so  tightly  that  he  could 
not  release  himself,  though  he  struggled  to  get  free. 

"Frank  .  .  .  don't  be  'ard  on  me,  don't  send  me  back. 
...  I  should  go  mad,  stark  raving  mad  .  .  .  you've  no 
notion  ...  I  see  my  face  in  the  glass,  and  my  own  eyes 
scare  me  .  .  .  till  I  shriek  myself  silly  .  .  .  that  devil, 
Brandon,  is  torturing  my  soul.  .  .  .  Oh!  oh!" 

Her  voice  rose  to  a  shriek,  and,  clutching  Frank,  she 
fell  on  her  knees,  with  her  arms  round  his  waist,  weeping 
wildly. 

"Hush!"  said  Frank,  white  to  the  lips.  "They  will 
hear  you  in  the  other  rooms.  For  heaven's  sake  be  quiet." 

He  seized  her  by  the  wrists  and  drew  her  up  from  the 
floor  where  she  grovelled  at  his  feet,  and  half  dragged  her 
to  the  arm-chair.  It  seemed  as  if  the  momentary  effect  of 
the  hot  tea  had  passed  off  and  as  if  the  spirit  she  had 
drunk  had  made  her  mad  again.  She  staggered  and 
swayed  so  that  she  almost  fell,  and  Frank  had  to  put  his 
arms  about  her,  before  he  could  get  her  into  the  chair. 

He  leant  over  her. 

"Peg  ...  be  reasonable.  Try  and  be  sensible  and 
quiet.  Don't  you  understand?  You  cannot  stay  here. 
I  am  expecting  friends — in  a  few  minutes.  You  must 
go  away  before  they  come." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  319 

She  moaned  out  that  she  could  not  go.  She  thought  he 
would  be  a  good  pal  to  her.  He  was  not  like  Brandon, 
who  was  a  devil  to  her. 

She  seemed  to  have  a  fierce  hatred  of  Brandon,  and 
Frank,  who  knew  the  man's  story  and  how  he  had  sac- 
rificed himself  to  save  her — mistakenly,  madly,  but  yet 
inspired  by  repentance  and  remorse — was  utterly  per- 
plexed. 

"Why  do  you  call  Brandon  a  devil?  .  .  .  He  has  done 
everything  in  the  world  for  you." 

She  laughed  piteously,  and  in  her  wild,  inconsistent  way 
reproached  herself  passionately  for  calling  Brandon  a 
devil.  He  was  a  good  angel.  But  that  was  the  trouble. 
She  could  not  live  up  to  an  angel.  The  strain  made  her 
feel  utterly  bad.  Brandon  was  so  cold,  when  he  looked 
at  her  with  his  steel  eyes  it  made  her  freeze.  She  was 
afraid  of  him.  Yes,  that  was  the  secret.  He  was  always 
so  silent,  and  moody,  and  far-away.  She  gave  him  no 
pleasure,  and  could  never  bring  any  warmth  to  him. 
He  had  suffered  her  kisses  as  a  block  of  stone  might,  and 
when  she  grew  tired  of  that  and  kissed  him  no  more 
he  did  not  miss  them.  She  had  craved  for  his  love,  and 
he  only  gave  her  kindness  and  pity.  She  had  longed  for 
him  to  show  that  he  needed  her,  that  he  could  not  do 
without  her,  but  he  only  made  her  feel  that  she  was  a 
burden  to  him.  He  was  her  protector  and  school-master, 
but  never  her  lover.  He  was  never  merry  with  her.  He 
never  laughed  and  said  foolish  things  to  her  like  Frank 
had  done.  And  then  he  kept  her  alone,  without  a  living 
soul  to  speak  to  except  the  old  charwoman,  who  despised 
her  as  a  bad  character.  He  was  ashamed  to  show  her 
to  his  friends.  He  hid  her  as  a  dreadful  secret.  He  did 
not  understand.  Oh,  how  could  he?  If  he  had  under- 
stood even  a  little  he  would  never  have  left  her  alone 
so  often  to  get  melancholy  mad.  Last  time  it  had  been 


320          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

better.  Frank  had  been  so  good,  such  a  dear  boy  to  her. 
For  the  first  time  in  her  wretched  life  she  had  seen  a 
glimpse  of  happiness.  When  he  had  gone  away  she 
missed  him  frightfully.  When  Brandon  went  away  this 
time  she  was  almost  glad  because  she  thought  Frank 
would  come  again.  But  two  days  had  gone  by,  and  she 
had  stared  herself  blind  out  of  the  window  watching  for 
him.  This  afternoon,  when  she  knew  that  he  would  never 
come  again  she  had  gone  out  into  the  Battersea  Park 
Road  and  bought  a  shillingsworth  of  brandy  at  the  gro- 
cer's shop.  She  had  called  at  the  chemist's  first  to  buy 
a  shillingsworth  of  poison,  but  she  could  not  remember 
the  name  of  one — her  wits  were  dazed — and  the  man 
looked  at  her  so  curiously  that  she  was  afraid,  and  when 
he  had  asked  for  her  name  and  address  she  believed  he 
was  going  to  send  for  a  policeman.  Oh,  the  brandy  had 
done  her  good.  It  had  put  a  little  pluck  into  her  heart, 
and  had  given  her  grit  enough  to  call  a  cab  and  drive  her 
to  Staple  Inn.  On  the  way  she  had  sung  softly  to  her- 
self, except  when  she  cried.  She  had  been  terribly  happy 
in  that  cab  driving  through  the  London  streets  towards 
him.  The  passing  lights  had  dazzled  her  eyes,  and  the 
cab  went  so  swiftly  it  seemed  as  if  she  were  flying  through 
the  air,  and  she  laughed,  just  like  a  child  going  to  a  party, 
as  she  had  seen  them  in  the  old  days  when  she  used  to 
cry  at  the  sight  of  them.  All  the  way  she  was  sure  that 
Frank  would  be  good  to  her  and  let  her  stay.  He  would 
never  send  her  back  to  that  awful  place  from  where  she 
had  escaped.  He  would  let  her  drudge  for  him,  and 
perhaps  he  would  like  it  if  she  kissed  him.  She  had 
gone  to  sleep  for  a  minute  or  two  in  the  cab,  and  had 
dreamed  that  she  was  kissing  him  and  that  he  smiled  at 
her.  Then  she  woke  up  with  a  jerk  when  the  cab  stopped, 
and  she  paid  the  man  her  last  five  shillings.  He  swore 
at  her  and  called  her  bad  names,  but  she  had  left  him 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  321 

swearing,  and  groped  her  way  upstairs  feeling  glad  and 
afraid  at  the  same  time.  When  she  found  he  was  out 
she  said  she  would  wait,  and  then  she  had  cried  in  the 
room,  and  felt  horribly  ill,  and  when  she  stared  down  at 
the  street  she  wondered  how  it  would  feel  if  she  threw 
herself  down.  It  had  made  her  laugh  to  think  that  she 
would  fall  on  the  people's  heads.  How  surprised  they 
would  be,  wouldn't  they? 

She  laughed  then,  with  such  a  shrill,  dreadful  sound 
that  Frank,  who  had  been  listening  to  all  this  wild  inco- 
herent talk  standing  motionless  in  the  centre  of  the  room 
almost  as  dazed  and  distracted  as  if  he  too  had  been 
drinking,  cried  out  sharply,  "Don't !" 

The  girl  looked  up,  and  stared  at  him. 

"As  sure  as  Gord  is  Gord,"  she  said  deliberately,  "I 
will  kill  myself  rather  than  go  back  to  that  place." 

Then  she  began  to  whimper,  and  said  he  was  a  dear 
boy  and  she  was  sure  he  would  be  kind  to  her. 

At  that  moment  there  resounded  through  the  flat  a 
sharp,  lightly-touched,  staccato  tattoo  on  the  door- 
knocker. 

Frank  started,  turned  as  pale  as  death,  looked  wildly 
round  the  room,  and  then  said,  "Good  God!"  softly  to 
himself.  He  could  not  move  hand  or  foot.  He  felt 
like  a  man  in  a  death-trap.  His  brain  refused  to  work  out 
any  solution  of  the  problem  which  confronted  him.  Be- 
hind that  knock  was  the  light  hand  of  Katherine.  What 
would  he  do  ?  How  could  he  explain  the  presence  of  this 
half-drunken  girl? 

At  the  sound  of  the  knock  Peg  had  risen,  and  with 
one  hand  on  the  mantelpiece  stared  towards  the  door. 

"Who's  that?" 

Frank  laughed  bitterly,  in  a  low  voice. 

"Those  are  my  friends,"  he  said.  "Two  ladies.  No 
doubt  vou  will  be  charmed  to  meet  them." 


322  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

For  a  moment  he  felt  very  cruel  to  this  girl  who  had 
spoilt  the  happiness  of  his  great  evening. 

"Ladies!"  said  Peg.  "Oh,  what'll  I  do?  ...  I  am  that 
drunk  and  mad " 

She  looked  round  the  room  as  though  for  a  place  to 
hide.  It  seemed  as  if  that  knock  on  the  door  had  sobered 
her  a  little. 

The  knock  sounded  again,  a  dainty,  playful,  fluttering 
knock — utterly  unlike  the  dabs  delivered  on  the  door  by 
the  postman  and  milkman  and  charwoman  and  other  peo- 
ple who  used  the  knocker. 

Frank  strode  swiftly  into  the  passage.  At  least  he 
could  not  keep  Katherine  and  Margaret  waiting  outside. 
In  the  few  seconds  it  took  him  to  reach  the  front  door  his 
thoughts  raced  swiftly  round  trying  to  find  a  way  out  of 
this  dilemma.  But  he  could  see  no  way  of  escape. 

Then  he  opened  the  door,  and  under  the  lamp  in  the 
passage  outside  stood  Katherine  Halstead.  She  was  in 
her  white  dress  with  the  gold  sequins,  and  a  white  opera 
cloak  was  hanging  from  her  shoulders.  Her  eyes  seemed 
as  bright  as  stars  to  Frank  as  she  smiled  at  him  and 
stepped  into  the  passage. 

"Mother  Hubbard  can't  come.  She  has  got  a  very 
bad  headache  and  begs  to  be  excused.  I  have  bullied  her 
and  cajoled  her,  but  she  says  she  would  only  be  like  a 
bear  with  a  sore  head.  Of  course  she  is  fearfully  dis- 
appointed." 

"By  Jove,"  said  Frank  gravely,  "I  am  awfully  sorry 
Mother  Hubbard  is  unwell." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  she  is  very  bad  .  .  .  and  I  dare 
say  we  shall  enjoy  ourselves.  I  adore  the  opera  so  much 
that  I  am  quite,  quite  selfish." 

She  said,  "Take  hold,"  and  turning  her  back  to  Frank 
slipped  off  her  cloak  into  his  hands.  Her  arms  and  neck 
were  bare,  and  looked  deliciously  soft  and  white  in  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  323 

lamp-light.  If  Frank  had  been  alone  with  this  charming 
girl  he  would  have  praised  God  that  he  might  have  her 
beauty  all  to  himself,  but  the  thought  of  Peg  in  the  room 
a  yard  away  made  him  numb  with  terror.  But  he  was 
always  so  quiet,  and  his  smile  was  always  so  serious,  that 
Katherine  did  not  notice  that  anything  was  wrong  with 
him.  He  lifted  her  hand  up  and  touched  it  with  his  lips 
and  said,  "You  look  very  beautiful  to-night,  Katherine/' 

"Come,"  she  said,  "no  pretty  compliments  or  I  shall 
catch  cold  in  your  passage  .  .  .  what  a  dear  little  place 
you  have  here,  Frank!" 

She  went  in  front  of  him  into  the  sitting-room  as 
though  to  take  possession  of  his  rooms.  For  a  moment 
Frank's  heart  seemed  to  stand  quite  still,  and  there  was  a 
singing  in  his  ears.  How  should  he  introduce  Peg,  how 
should  he  explain  her  ? 

"What  a  jolly  fire!"  said  Katherine.  "It  was  chilly 
in  that  cab  with  these  naked  arms  of  mine." 

Frank  stood  inside  the  doorway,  and  his  eyes  roved 
round  the  room.  Peg  had  vanished !  God !  what  had  she 
done?  Beyond  was  the  door  leading  into  his  slip  of  a 
scullery.  It  was  ajar  by  an  eighth  of  an  inch.  The  girl 
was  hiding  in  there! 

Frank  went  cold.  The  situation  was  worse  than  ever. 
How  could  he  say,  "Katherine,  a  girl  is  hiding  in  there. 
I  am  sorry  I  cannot  tell  you  her  name  or  anything  about 
her.  She  is  a  friend  of  mine,  and  I  hope  you  will  excuse 
her  being  intoxicated."  What  should  he  do  ?  Dear  God, 
what  should  he  do? 

The  situation  of  course  was  really  rather  comical.  If 
Frank  had  been  a  bright,  breezy  person  with  a  cool  head 
and  a  sense  of  humour  and  the  gift  of  telling  a  white  lie 
well,  he  might  have  got  out  of  the  difficulty  by  introduc- 
ing Peg  as  the  charwoman  who  had  obtained  access  to 
his  decanter.  It  is  true  that  Peg  did  not  look  like  a  char- 


324  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

woman,  for  she  was  exactly  like  one  of  Rossetti's  dream- 
women  or  one  of  Burne-Jones's  saints.  But  then  her 
cockney  dialect  would  be  convincing  enough. 

Unfortunately  for  Frank  he  was  not  a  bright,  breezy 
person  with  a  sense  of  humour  and  a  cool  head.  At  that 
moment  any  sense  of  humour  he  might  have  possessed 
had  gone  a  thousand  miles  away  from  him,  and  so  far 
from  having  a  cool  head  he  was  in  a  pitiable  state  of 
nervous  perplexity.  Then,  too,  he  had  no  gift  for  tell- 
ing white  lies,  being  of  a  serious  and  truthful  nature  .  .  . 
and  he  was  utterly  inexperienced  in  melodramatic  situa- 
tions of  this  kind.  No  doubt  Codrington  would  have 
played  the  game  skilfully,  and  at  least  made  the  best  of  a 
bad  case.  Frank  merely  felt  as  if  he  had  been  stricken 
with  idiocy. 

Katherine  held  her  white  hands  out  to  the  fire  and 
warmed  herself.  Then  she  turned  round  and  looked  at 
the  room. 

"What  a  pretty  little  crib !" 

"Do  you  like  it?" 

"Oh,  it  is  sweet  and  old-fashioned.  I  had  no  idea  you 
lived  in  such  luxury." 

She  went  over  to  the  window  and  opened  the  lattice 
to  put  her  head  out  into  Holborn,  looking  down  upon  the 
lights  of  London,  and  the  swirling  traffic,  and  the  adver- 
tisements which  flashed  out  in  red  letters,  and  then  dis- 
appeared and  then  reappeared. 

"My  word!"  she  said,  drawing  in  her  head  again. 
"That  ought  to  give  you  inspiration,  Frank.  It  is  won- 
derful." 

"One  gets  used  to  it." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so.  ...  Even  the  Alps  would  get 
monotonous  if  one  saw  them  every  day." 

She  went  round  the  room  staring  at  the  prints  and 
sketches  and  photographs  on  the  wall. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  325 

"Very  pretty,  Frank  ...  oh,  delightful  .  .  .  that  is 
your  mother,  I  am  sure." 

"Yes,  that  is  my  mother.    How  did  you  know  ?" 

Frank  wiped  some  beads  of  cold  sweat  off  his  fore- 
head. He  was  wondering  how  long  Peg  would  keep 
quiet. 

"She  is  like  you  .  .  .  the  eyes  and  the  mouth  are  the 
same.  I  would  like  to  know  her,  Frank." 

"I  hope  you  will  one  of  these  days." 

"You  say  that  rather  coldly.  I  believe  you  think  we 
should  quarrel !" 

Katherine  gave  a  ripple  of  laughter  and  looked  across 
at  him  rather  roguishly. 

"She  would  love  you  at  first  sight,"  said  Frank. 

"Oh,  I  am  not  so  sure.  She  would  think  me  a  very 
frivolous,  worldly  young  person." 

Katherine  sank  on  the  floor  in  billows  of  chiffon  and 
scanned  the  books  in  a  low  case. 

"Um,  um,  .  .  .  Berenger's  'Chansons/  'L'Histoire 
literaire  de  France/  %'Abbe  Constantin/  George  Mere- 
dith's11 :em>./  'Peter  Ibbetson/  Hazlitt's  'Spirit  of  the 
Age' " — slie  read  through  some  of  the  titles  and  picked 
out  a  volume  here  and  there,  putting  her  pretty  nose  into 
its  pages. 

"I  should  love  to  browse  among  all  these,"  she  said. 

"Why  not?"  said  Frank.  "Every  one  of  them  is  at 
your  service." 

He  heard  a  movement  through  the  open  door  of  the 
scullery,  and  it  made  his  pulse  beat  with  a  sickening 
thud. 

"Those  old  books  are  dusty.  Take  care  they  do  not 
make  you  dirty,  Katherine." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I  must  be  careful  in  my  best  bib  and 
tucker." 

She  sprang  up  from  the  floor  with  a  swish  of  chiffon 


326  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

over  a  white  silk  petticoat.  The  sound  would  have  been 
music  to  Frank's  ears  if  they  had  not  been  strained  to 
hear  the  slightest  noise  in  the  adjoining  room. 

"Well,  how  about  that  tea?"  said  Katherine.  "Let  me 
help  you  get  it  in." 

Her  eyes  softened  and  she  blushed  a  little  when  she 
added — 

"It  will  be  quite  like  a  menage  a  deux.3' 

Then  as  she  moved  round  to  the  fireplace  again  she 
noticed  two  things  which  surprised  her. 

She  saw  that  Frank's  face  was  white  and  that  he  had 
a  tense,  strained  look.  And  she  saw  that  a  woman's  hat 
lay  on  the  floor  by  the  side  of  a  flat-topped  coal-scuttle, 
Qn  which  was  a  tray  with  tea-things  that  had  recently 
been  used. 

She  picked  up  the  hat,  and  said  in  a  wondering  way — 

"Whose  is  that?" 

Frank  knew  that  his  moment  had  come.    It  was  ?  -* 
lief  to  him,  for  the  strain  on  his  nerves  har" 
severe. 

"I  had  a  visitor  this  afternooi  '  Vim  then 

stopped,  not  knowing  what  else  to  i  ^ 

"Did  she  leave  her  hat  behind?" 

Katherine  asked  the  question  with  an  attempt  at  gaiety, 
but  it  was  evident  that  she  was  becoming  troubled. 
Frank's  face  told  her  that  he  was  strangely  embarrassed. 
He  had  the  look  of  a  guilty  man. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact  she  is  still  here." 

"Still  here?    Where?" 

She  spoke  quickly,  and  raised  her  head  slightly  as 
though  scenting  danger. 

"I  think  she  is  in  that  room,"  said  Frank,  pointing 
towards  the  scullery.  Then,  he  spoke  rapidly  and  ex- 
citedly. "I  can  hardly  explain.  Ikjs  a  most  extraordi- 
nary situation.  I  ask  you  to  believe  me  that  I  had  not 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  327 

the  slightest  idea  this  woman  was  coming,  and  it  is  not 
by  my  wish  that  she  concealed  herself.  She  is  a  poor 
unfortunate  creature,  half  mad  with  grief.  I  have  tried 
to  be  kind  to  her,  and  she  came  here  for  help  -  "  He 
was  going  on  incoherently,  but  Katherine  stopped  him 
with  a  gesture. 

"Who  is  this  woman?  .  .  .  Why  does  she  hide  from 


As  she  spoke  the  door  of  the  slip-room  opened  slowly, 
and  Peg  stood  there  holding  the  door-handle. 

The  two  women  stared  at  each  other  for  a  moment; 
Peg  wistfully  and  piteously,  Katherine  in  a  kind  of 
amazement. 

That  moment  when  the  two  women  looked  at  each 
other  seemed  to  Frank  —  who  stood  stock  still  and  quite 
incapable  of  speaking  or  even  thinking  in  a  rational 
way  —  to  have  lasted  an  hour  before  Katherine  turned  to 
him  with  a  gesture  of  impatience.  Her  face  was  flushed 
and  her  eyes  wer  *  very  troubled. 

"There  is  s'  "  *ng  I  do  not  understand,"  she  said 
in  a  low  voice*  *  iiaps  it  is  well  that  I  should  not  .  .  . 
I  had  better  lea\  .  y'cfu  with  this  —  lady." 

She  spoke  the  last  word  scornfully,  and  with  her  head 
held  very  straight,  went  towards  the  door. 

"Katherine!"  said  Frank.  "You  are  not  going!  .  .  . 
This  is  my  gala  night.  In  a  little  while  we  must  be  at 
Lohengrin!" 

He  tried  to  take  hold  of  her  wrist  as  she  passed  him, 
but  she  threw  his  hand  off.  "Let  me  go." 

Peg  had  come  forward  into  the  room  and  steadied 
herself  by  holding  the  back  of  a  chair.  She  called  out  to 
Katherine,  saying  that  she  needn't  be  afraid.  She  was 
a  good  woman,  but  it  would  not  hurt  her  to  be  in  the 
same  room  with  a  girl  who  had  never  had  her  chance  of 
being  good. 


328  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Frank  turned  on  her  wrathfully. 

"Silence,"  he  said.  "You  have  done  enough  harm  for 
one  day." 

"Harm  ?"  said  Peg  wonderingly.  The  word  seemed  to 
wound  her  and  she  muttered  it  to  herself  incoherently, 
and  then  cried,  and  said  she  loved  the  ground  he  walked 
on  and  she  would  rather  die  than  do  him  any  harm. 

Frank  strode  into  the  hall  after  Katherine,  who  had 
already  taken  her  cloak  and  thrown  it  over  her  shoul- 
ders. 

"Katherine,"  he  said,  "you  do  not  trust  me.  You  are 
angry  because  this  girl  is  here.  You  have  some  horrible 
suspicion.  May  I  tell  you  on  my  word  of  honour " 

"Oh,"  said  Katherine  very  bitterly,  "I  do  not  believe 
in  any  man's  honour  .  .  .  now.  They  are  all  the  same." 

She  put  her  hands  up  to  her  face  and  shuddered  and 
said  in  a  low  voice — 

"I  did  not  expect  this  kind  of  thing  of  you,  Frank." 

"What  kind  of  thing?  ...  Do  you  insult  me?" 

Frank  spoke  with  real  anger.  His  nerves  had  been 
overstrained,  and  that  Katherine  should  think  evil  of 
him  when  he  was  innocent  stung  him  to  the  quick. 

"It  is  I  who  have  been  insulted,"  said  Katherine,  stamp- 
ing her  foot  lightly,  in  passionate  anger — "grossly  and 
intolerably." 

She  went  to  the  door  and  fumbled  at  the  latch,  but 
could  not  unfasten  it. 

"Will  you  kindly  open  the  door?"  she  said,  compelled 
to  turn  to  him  for  help. 

Frank  held  the  corner  of  her  cloak  in  a  tight  grasp. 

"Before  I  open  the  door  for  you,"  he  said,  "I  must  tell 
you  that  you  will  be  sorry  one  day  for  having  been  so 
quick  to  think  evil  of  me.  You  have  not  asked  for  any 
explanation.  You  have  not  given  me  a  chance  of  self- 
defence.  Do  you  think  that  is  quite  kind,  or  fair?" 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  329 

It  seemed  that  Katherine  wavered.  Perhaps  his  last 
words  revived  her  sense  of  justice,  which  had  been  over- 
powered by  a  sudden  shock  of  surprise  and  suspicion. 

"I  am  sorry,"  she  said.  "I  did  not  make  any  accusa- 
tion. I  do  not  make  any  .  .  .  but  oh,  please  open  the 
door.  I  must  go  back  to  Margaret.  I — I  feel  rather  un- 
well." 

Frank  opened  the  door  and  said,  "I  will  fetch  you  a 
cab." 

He  ran  down  the  old  wooden  stairs  and  out  of  Staple 
Inn  into  Holborn.  A  hansom  was  passing  and  he  hailed 
it,  and  then  went  back  to  where  the  white  figure  of  Kath- 
erine stood  in  the  dark  doorway. 

"We  should  have  been  driving  together  to  the  Opera," 
he  said,  as  she  walked  by  his  side  out  of  the  inn.  "My 
little  dream  has  been  broken  up,  all  through  a  silly,  stupid, 
damnable  mistake." 

Katherine  put  her  hand  on  his  arm.  "Perhaps  it  is  my 
mistake,"  she  said  quickly.  "If  so  I  will  go  on  my  knees 
to  ask  your  forgiveness." 

Frank  drew  a  quick  breath  and  took  her  hands  under 
the  archway  of  Staple  Inn. 

"Katherine!" 

"Who  is  that  strange  girl?" 

Frank  hesitated. 

"She  is  called  Peg.    She  has  no  other  name." 

"Is  she  not  the  queer  girl  whom  Quin  met  with  you 
in  Battersea  Park?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank.  "I  have  been  befriending  her. 
She  has  had  a  tragic  story " 

"How  did  you  get  to  know  her  ?" 

Frank  was  silent,  and  Katherine  withdrew  her  hands 
from  him,  as  though  she  were  losing  confidence. 

"The  hateful  thing  is,"  said  Frank,  "that  I  cannot  tell 


330  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

you,  just  yet.     I  am  under  a  pledge  of  honour  to  a 
friend." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  you  can't  tell  me  anything  more 
than  that  ?"  said  Katherine.  *  Why  did  she  come  to  your 
rooms  to-day  ?  Where  is  she  going  afterwards  ?" 

Frank  was  wondering  what  answer  he  could  give,  and 
he  could  find  no  answer  which  would  seem  reasonable  and 
true.  "To  tell  you  the  honest  truth,  I  cannot  say." 

"You  cannot  say!"  said  Katherine  incredulously. 

"No  ...  it  sounds  absurd  and  unconvincing,  and  all 
that,  but  it  is  another  man's  secret.  As  a  man  of  hon- 
our .  .  ." 

"Oh,  you  talk  too  much  of  honour,"  said  Katherine,  so 
bitterly  and  impatiently  that  Frank  was  stricken  dumb. 

She  stepped  out  of  the  archway  into  Holborn  where 
the  hansom  cab  was  waiting. 

Frank  opened  the  doors  for  her,  and  she  took  her  seat 
and  gave  the  driver  the  address  through  the  trap.  Frank 
said  "Katherine!"  in  a  pleading,  broken  voice,  but  the 
driver  flicked  the  horse  and  the  cab  went  jingling  down 
Holborn. 

When  Frank  went  back  to  his  rooms  he  felt  extremely 
sorry  for  himself.  He  could  have  found  it  an  easy  thing 
to  sit  on  the  stairs  and  cry  like  a  girl.  It  was  only  a 
sense  of  humour  which  kept  him  from  this  weakness. 
Instead  of  crying  he  did  what  many  men  do  when  they 
have  been  swiped  in  the  face  by  a  sudden  stroke  of  ill- 
fortune — he  laughed.  When  he  thought  of  the  gaiety 
with  which  he  had  leapt  up  these  stairs  only  a  little  while 
ago,  with  the  white  flowers  in  one  hand  and  the  latch-key 
in  the  other,  and  remembered  how  he  had  anticipated 
every  moment  of  an  evening  that  was  to  have  been  so  de- 
lightful, there  seemed  a  grim  and  devilish  irony  in  this 
miserable  catastrophe.  But  his  laugh  was  hard  and  bitter 
and  his  self-pity  was  accompanied  with  a  simmering  an-. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  331 

ger.  He  was  very  angry  with  Peg  for  having  come  like 
a  witch  to  blight  his  garden  of  love.  He  was  even  angry 
with  Katherine  for  having  so  quickly,  so  unreasonably,, 
and  so  mistakenly,  suspected  him  of  evil  relations  with 
this  girl.  Perhaps  he  had  been  a  fool  to  respect  Brandon's 
secret  with  a  Quixotic  reverence  for  a  nice  point  of  hon- 
our. Ninety-nine  men  out  of  a  hundred  would  have  con- 
sidered the  circumstances  of  the  case  sufficiently  grave  to 
absolve  them  from  such  a  pledge  of  confidence.  Per- 
haps if  Katherine  had  not  been  so  ready  to  smell  scandal 
Frank  himself  would  not  have  held  to  the  letter  of  his 
word.  But  she  had  not  helped  him.  She  had  not  with- 
held judgment  until  he  was  able  to  clear  himself.  His 
hesitation  and  nervousness  had  strengthened  her  suspi- 
cions, and  she  had  gone  away  believing  that  he  was  no 
better  than  most  men  of  loose  morals.  That  hurt  him 
and  stung  his  pride.  It  would  make  him  less  ready  to 
clear  himself  in  her  eyes.  Surely  she  should  have  had 
more  trust  in  him?  Surely  if  she  had  the  slightest  love 
for  him  she  would  have  known  that  every  instinct  of 
his  character  was  contrary  to  her  suspicions. 

But  Peg  had  been  mad  and  wicked.  He  could  never 
forgive  her  part  in  this  tragedy  of  misunderstanding. 
When  he  went  into  the  flat  again  words  were  on  his  lips 
which  he  had  never  yet  spoken  to  any  woman.  It  was 
well  that  he  did  not  speak  them  now.  .  .  .  When  he  saw 
the  girl  sitting  on  the  floor  and  crying  bitterly  with  her 
face  against  his  old  arm-chair,  he  stood  and  looked  at 
her  silently  and  unable  to  crush  her  still  lower  to  the 
ground  by  words  of  abuse  and  anger.  She  abased  her* 
self  before  him  in  a  broken-hearted  way.  With  a  worn- 
an's  intuition  she  had  realised  the  evil  she  had  done. 
Perhaps  the  loathing  she  had  for  her  own  character  and 
the  remembrance  of  her  past  life  helped  her  to  understand 
how  such  a  girl  as  Katherine  would  shrink  from  her  and 


332  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

suspect  the  honour  of  the  man  to  whose  rooms  Peg  had 
come.  She  had  also — in  spite  of  her  semi-intoxication 
— seen  something  in  Frank's  eyes  which  told  her  that 
the  girl  in  white  was  his  "young  woman,"  and  with  that 
generosity  which  is  often  found  in  the  hearts  of  women 
of  even  the  lowest  class  she  reproached  herself  passion- 
ately for  having  come  between  the  boy  who  had  been  her 
"pal"  and  the  girl  of  his  choice. 

"Oh,  I  am  that  sorry,"  she  said  several  times,  and  she 
wished  that  she  had  drowned  herself  rather  than  come 
to  Staple  Inn  to  make  a  beast  of  herself  before  his 
friends.  She  got  up  and  put  her  big  black  hat  on  her 
touzled  hair  and  fumbled  on  her  long  black  gloves,  say- 
ing that  she  would  go  before  she  had  done  any  more 
harm. 

"Will  you  go  back  to  the  flat  quietly,  like  a  good  girl  ?" 
said  Frank. 

She  hesitated  and  went  rather  white  before  she  said — 

"Oh  yes,  I'll  go  back.     I  won't  be  troubling  you  any 


more." 


But  he  read  something  in  her  eyes,  something  that  made 
him  stare  at  her  sternly. 

"You  are  not  going  to  do  anything  rash — wicked?"  he 
asked. 

She  drooped  her  eyes.     "What  do  you  mean  by  rash?" 

"I'll  go  back  with  you,"  said  Frank  very  quietly,  "and 
see  you  safely  home." 

This  seemed  to  frighten  her,  and  she  said  in  an  eager 
way  that  she  would  rather  go  alone. 

"Do  you  swear  to  me  that  you  will  go  straight  home !" 
asked  Frank,  and  she  answered  yes,  she  would  be  glad  to 
go — home. 

There  was  something  so  peculiar  in  the  way  she  spoke 
that  word  that  Frank  read  a  horrible  significance  in  it. 
He  could  not  trust  her.  He  believed  that  if  he  let  her  out 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  333 

of  his  sight  that  night,  some  tragedy  would  happen,  some 
unthinkable  thing.  Once  again  he  was  the  victim  of  a 
dreadful  perplexity.  He  did  not  know  what  to  do  for 
the  best.  He  could  not  keep  the  girl  in  his  rooms,  but 
even  if  he  took  her  back  to  Battersea  Park  and  left  her 
there  alone,  she  might  slip  out  again.  .  .  .  The  river  was 
not  far  off.  The  thought  which  shaped  itself  in  his 
brain  made  him  shudder. 

But  while  he  was  wondering  there  came  another  knock 
at  his  front  door,  and  for  the  second  time  in  one  evening 
the  sound  gave  him  a  shock.  Who  else  was  coming  to 
meet  this  girl  in  his  rooms  and  to  suspect  him  of  evil 
things  ? 

But  this  time  he  did  not  hesitate.  He  was  becoming 
hardened.  Even  the  most  sensitive  man  finds  his  emo- 
tions become  less  exciting  if  too  many  come  crowding 
into  a  short  space.  "Stay  here,"  he  said  to  the  girl  quite 
sternly.  "Do  not  move."  Then  he  strode  out,  shut  the 
door  of  the  sitting-room,  walked  down  the  passage, 
opened  the  front  door,  and — started  back  with  a  word  of 
amazement  when  he  saw  Brandon -there. 

The  man's  face  was  white,  and  he  said  in  his  abrupt, 
matter-of-fact  way — 

"Peg's  gone — missing  from  the  flat.  Is  she  here  by 
any  chance  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank,  "she  is  here." 

Brandon  stepped  into  the  passage  and  looked  keenly 
at  Frank  with  his  steely  eyes. 

"What's  she  here  for?" 

Something  in  the  tone  of  his  voice  made  the  words 
sound  like  an  accusation.  Frank  knew  that  this  man  also 
suspected  him.  After  what  he  had  gone  through  that 
evening  the  thought  maddened  him. 

"Because  you  are  a  damned  scoundrel,"  he  said  fur- 


334  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

iously  but  in  a  low  voice.    "Because  you  have  left  me 
the  task  of  saving  that  girl  from  suicide." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  asked  Brandon.  He  spoke 
quite  calmly  and  coldly,  but  there  was  a  terrible  frown 
on  his  grave,  massive  face. 

Frank  told  him  what  he  meant  in  a  few  swift,  sharp, 
cruel  sentences.  He  said  that  Brandon  had  made  that 
girl  the  victim  of  his  morbid  desire  for  self-admiration. 
He  hugged  to  himself  the  thought  that  he  was  doing  a 
heroic  thing  in  keeping  the  girl  in  his  house.  He  per- 
suaded himself  that  he  was  saving  the  girl  from  a  life  of 
degradation.  But  Frank  could  not  tell  him  that  he  was 
degrading  her  to  lower  depths  than  she  had  ever  reached 
in  her  life  before.  By  keeping  her  as  a  prisoner  in  his 
flat,  by  isolating  her  from  all  companionship,  he  was  tor- 
turing her  poor  soul  into  madness.  He  knew  that  when 
he  left  her  alone  she  took  to  drink.  He  was  a  low  cad 
to  keep  the  girl  in  such  conditions. 

These  words  were  spoken  in  a  low,  fierce  voice,  and 
Frank  was  trembling  with  nervous  passion.  But  when 
he  had  finished  and  stood  breathing  heavily,  half  expect- 
ing an  outburst  of  rage  from  Brandon,  he  was  astonished 
when  the  man  put  a  hand  on  his  arm  and  said — 

"You  are  quite  right,  Luttrell.  For  a  moment  I 
thought — however,  let  that  pass.  I  have  been  a  blind 
fool — perhaps  something  more  of  a  scoundrel  than  I  can 
quite  believe.  What's  to  be  done  ?" 

"Give  her  some  companions,"  said  Frank;  all  his  pas- 
sion cooled  down  by  Brandon's  words.  "Get  her  some 
work  to  do." 

Then  he  added,  with  a  laugh  in  which  there  was  a  note 
of  his  former  bitterness,  "And  do  not  get  men  like  me 
to  look  after  the  girl.  The  responsibility  is  too  great  and 
the  consequences  too  embarrassing." 

"Tell  me?"  said  Brandon. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  335 

Frank  looked  towards  the  closed  door  of  his  room. 

"Let  us  go  in  to  her,"  he  said. 

He  went  in  and  said,  "Peg,  Brandon  is  here." 

The  girl  flushed  to  the  eyes,  and  when  Brandon  went 
in  she  stood  looking  very  miserable  and  despairing  and 
ashamed. 

"Peg,"  said  Brandon  quietly,  "I  came  back  unexpect- 
edly. I  am  glad  to  find  you  with  our  friend  Luttrell. 
Are  you  ready  to  come  home  now  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  suppose  so,"  said  Peg  wearily.  "I  am  very 
tired." 

In  a  little  while  they  all  went  downstairs  together  and 
Brandon  put  Peg  into  a  cab.  Before  he  got  in  himself  he 
held  Frank's  hand  in  a  firm  grip  and  said,  "When  can 
I  have  a  talk  with  you — to-morrow  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank. 

He  stood  staring  at  the  cab  as  it  went  tinkling  down 
Holborn,  and  then  went  back  to  his  rooms  again  and  sat 
with  his  head  in  his  hands  thinking  of  all  the  drama  of 
that  evening  and  wondering  what  Katherine  said  when 
she  went  back  to  Margaret  Hubbard.  Those  two  girls 
were  thinking  bad  things  of  him,  and,  though  he  had  a 
white  conscience,  he  had  a  bleeding  heart,  for  he  was 
very  young. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

BEFORE  Frank  was  out  of  bed  next  morning  the  post- 
man gave  a  dab  on  the  door,  and  he  heard  something  rattle 
through  the  letter-box.  He  had  a  vague  curiosity  to 
know  what  the  letters  were,  but  he  dressed  and  shaved 
before  he  took  the  trouble  to  get  them.  In  the  grey 
light  of  morning  he  thought  over  the  events  of  the  eve- 
ning before,  and  the  memory  of  them  did  not  make  a 
cheerful  beginning  to  a  new  day. 

When  he  went  out  into  the  passage  he  found  two  let- 
ters on  the  mat.  One  of  them  was  addressed  in  a  neat, 
woman's  hand,  the  other  had  a  typewritten  address  and 
he  saw  by  the  imprint  on  the  back  that  it  was  from  his 
office.  The  first  was  from  Margaret  Hubbard,  and  he 
read  her  few  lines  with  eager  interest. 


DEAR  FRANK  (she  wrote), 
"Katherine  came  home  last  night  hours  before  I 
expected  her  and  made  me  jump  out  of  my  skin  with 
fright.  She  is  very  angry  with  you,  and  cried  like  a  child 
before  I  put  her  into  bed.  I  could  not  get  a  word  of  ex- 
planation from  her,  and  I  could  only  gather  in  a  vague 
way  that  you  are  a  very  wicked  fellow  and  have  com- 
mitted a  dreadful  crime  and  broken  her  poor  heart.  As  I 
know  you  to  be  as  good  as  gold  I  am  sure  that  some  fool- 
ish misunderstanding  has  taken  place  between  you  two 
children,  and  I  shall  be  glad  if  you  will  look  into  my 
room  at  the  office  this  morning,  so  that  I  may  give  you 
the  benefit  of  an  old  woman's  wisdom,  and  help  to  sweep 
the  clouds  out  of  your  sky.  I  shall  make  Katherine 

336 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  337 

keep  to  her  bed  to-morrow  as  I  am  sure  that  after  so 
many  tears  and  sighs  she  will  have  a  sick  headache  in 
the  morning. 

"Yours  very  sincerely, 

"MARGARET  HUBBARD. 

"P.S. — I  fancy  Katherine  is  just  a  little  bit  ashamed 
of  herself,  so  don't  be  downhearted." 

This  letter,  so  characteristic  of  "Mother"  Hubbard 
that  he  could  hear  her  speaking  the  words  as  he  read 
them,  and  could  see  her  restful,  kindly  eyes  looking  up 
at  him  from  the  paper,  gave  Frank  Luttrell  great  com- 
fort. He  felt  sure  that  with  Margaret  Hubbard's  help 
he  would  be  able  to  clear  his  character,  and  restore  him- 
self to  his  lady's  grace.  If  Brandon  played  the  game 
he  would  release  Frank  from  the  pledge  of  honour  suf- 
ficiently to  put  himself  straight  with  these  two  good 
women.  He  thought  the  matter  out  as  he  boiled  his 
egg  and  prepared  his  breakfast.  Then  suddenly  he  re- 
membered the  other  letter  and  opened  it.  He  guessed 
it  was  a  note  from  Vicary  setting  him  an  early  task. 
But  as  he  read  the  few  typewritten  words  he  gave  a  sharp 
ejaculation  and  then  stared  at  it  in  dismay.  It  was  a 
formal  note  marked  Private  and  Confidential  and  ran  as 
follows — 

"DEAR  SIR, 

"I  regret  to  inform  you  that  I  am  instructed  by  the 
proprietor,  Mr.  Benjamin  Harrison,  to  give  you  one 
month's  notice  from  this  date  terminating  your  engage- 
ment with  this  journal. 

"As  this  is  due  to  the  reconstruction  of  the  Company, 
for  which  negotiations  are  now  proceeding  and  the  suc- 
cess of  which  depends  in  a  large  measure  upon  the  loy- 


338  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

alty  and  secrecy  of  the  staff,  I  have  to  ask  you  to  regard 
this  notice  as  strictly  private. 

"Yours  faithfully, 

"RICHARD  FEATHERSTONE, 
"Secretary  to  The  Liberal/  Ltd." 

The  exact  and  literal  significance  of  the  words  was  not 
understood  by  Frank  Luttrell,  but  after  reading  them 
several  times  in  a  dazed  way  one  meaning  stood  out 
cold  and  clear  and  unmistakable.  He  had  received 
one  month's  notice.  He  was  dismissed  from  the  Rag! 

For  a  while  it  was  as  though  he  had  been  struck  by 
a  heavy  blow  which  half  stunned  him.  Coming  so  soon 
after  his  promotion  it  was  a  cruel  stroke.  During  the 
past  few  weeks  he  had  indulged  in  bright  ambitious 
hopes.  He  had  been  praised  for  his  articles  and  envied 
by  his  colleagues.  He  had  written  home  the  good  news 
to  his  father  and  mother  (sending  presents  to  them  out 
of  his  first  increased  salary),  and  they  had  been  over- 
joyed at  this  recognition  of  their  son's  talent,  exagger- 
ating its  significance  according  to  their  pride  in  his 
achievements. 

Above  all,  this  salary  which  was  more  than  enough  for 
himself  was  nearly  enough  for  two,  and  it  had  given  him 
courage  to  speak  to  Katherine  as  one  who  could  reason- 
ably hope  to  provide  for  a  wife.  Now  in  a  month's  time 
he  would  be  once  again  "without  visible  means  of  sub- 
sistence." At  the  thought  he  shivered  and  felt  very 
cold  and  stared  with  blank  eyes  at  the  vision  of  another 
hard  struggle  on  starvation  pay,  picking  up  odd  scraps, 
racking  his  brains  for  ideas  which  appealed  to  no  one 
but  himself,  writing  articles  with  the  prescience  that  they 
would  join  his  stock  of  rejected  addresses.  That  was  a 
gloomy  prospect  after  his  short-lived  success,  but  he 
would  have  had  pluck  enough  to  face  poverty  again  if 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  339 

he  had  stood  alone.  It  was  the  thought  of  Katherine 
which  crushed  him.  As  a  man  without  a  job  he  would 
have  to  abandon  his  bright  dream.  That  had  been  dis- 
solved into  thin  air  by  the  words  in  the  scrap  of  paper 
before  him.  The  best  he  could  hope  for  now  would  be 
a  reconciliation  after  the  scene  of  last  night.  He  would 
not  be  so  great  a  cad  as  to  ask  her  to  wait  for  him  until 
he  could  build  up  his  new  career.  He  had  learnt  enough 
of  Fleet  Street  to  know  that  he  would  have  to  begin  at 
the  bottom  rung  of  the  ladder  if,  indeed,  he  could  get 
his  feet  on  any  rung. 

Then  he  groaned  aloud.  This  would  have  been  hard  to 
bear  anyhow.  But,  oh,  it  was  harder  a  thousand  times 
because  Katherine  was  angry  with  him.  He  could  not 
go  to  her  for  consolation.  This  was  a  double  tragedy, 
and  he  had  been  wounded  in  the  heart  before  being  bludg- 
eoned about  the  head.  Last  night  Frank  Luttrell  had 
been  very  sorry  for  himself.  This  morning  he  would 
have  sold  his  hopes  of  happiness  for  a  threepenny-bit. 

Then  he  read  his  dismissal  once  again  with  lack-lustre 
eyes,  and  suddenly  he  lifted  up  his  head  and  said,  "My 
God !"  as  though  some  new  and  startling  interpretation  of 
its  meaning  had  been  revealed  to  him.  As  an  egotist, 
like  all  men  born  of  women,  he  had  only  thought  of  the 
words  as  they  affected  himself.  But  now  it  struck  him 
with  a  blinding  light  that  he  was  only  one  out  of  many, 
that  the  whole  staff  of  the  Rag  was  in  the  same  boat, 
which  was  in  danger  of  shipwreck.  They  had  all  re- 
ceived these  notices  marked  "private  and  confidential"— 
Katherine,  Codrington,  Brandon,  Quin,  Vicary,  Margaret 
Hubbard,  Braithwaite — the  whole  population  of  that  hu- 
man beehive!  And  he  had  been  thinking  miserably  of 
his  own  wretched  personality!  He  had  been  indulging 
in  selfish  egoism  in  the  face  of  a  great  tragedy  which  in- 
volved the  lives  of  hundreds.  Supposing  the  paper  went 


340          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

under?  Supposing  the  "hope  of  reconstruction"  were 
unfulfilled?  What  would  Katherine  and  Margaret  do? 
What  would  all  those  men  do  who  had  wives  and  chil- 
dren— the  compositors  upstairs  who  lived  in  the  back 
streets  of  Peckham  and  Camberwell,  the  editorial  men 
who  kept  up  a  "social  position"  in  small  flats  at  Bays- 
water  and  Hampstead  and  Battersea  Park  ?  Frank  Lut- 
trell  with  white  lips  cursed  his  stupid  selfishness  which 
had  made  him  blind  to  a  general  catastrophe. 

He  hurried  off  to  the  office,  and  when  he  got  through 
the  doors  into  the  hall  leading  to  the  business  offices 
he  saw  at  once  that  the  issue  of  the  notices  had  come 
as  a  bombshell  into  this  building.  Groups  of  men  were 
talking  in  whispers,  with  white  scared  faces.  The  led- 
ger clerks  were  doing  no  work,  and  had  their  heads  to- 
gether. 

The  secretary  of  the  company,  Richard  Featherstone, 
who  had  signed  the  month's  notice,  was  surrounded  by 
five  or  six  men  who  were  talking  in  low,  excited  whis- 
pers. Featherstone  was  a  tall,  gaunt  man,  singularly 
like  the  worthy  knight  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  but 
always  smiling,  bland,  genial,  and  optimistic.  As  a  cash- 
ier, he  had  paid  Frank  his  salary  week  by  week,  and  had 
always  been  effusively  polite  and  courteous.  Now  he 
was  still  smiling,  but  his  eyes  were  troubled,  and  he 
shrugged  his  shoulders  again  and  again,  and  spread  out 
his  long,  bony  hands  in  a  deprecating  way. 

"My  good  gentlemen,"  Frank  heard  him  say,  "do  not 
take  this  little  affair  too  seriously.  Put  the  notices  in 
Your  pockets  and  think  no  more  about  them.  It  will  all 
come  right.  It  is  the  merest  formality,  I  assure  you." 

Brandon  looked  at  him  with  his  keen,  steel-blue  eyes. 

"If  it  is  a  mere  formality  it  is  a  very  stupid  one.  Do 
you  think  these  notices  can  be  kept  secret?  Why,  in 
less  than  half  an  hour  the  news  will  be  all  over  Fleet 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  341 

Street.  Then  how  about  our  advertisers  ?  Do  you  think 
they  will  put  their  money  into  a  sinking  ship  ?  Bah !  we 
had  better  haul  down  the  flag  at  once." 

"My  dear  Mr.  Brandon/5  said  the  secretary,  "if  all 
you  gentlemen  shut  your  mouths  and  say  nothing,  nobody 
outside  will  be  any  the  wiser.  The  proprietor  relies  on 
your  loyalty." 

"A  secret  shared  by  five  hundred  people,"  said  Bran- 
don, "is  no  secret.  Have  the  comps  had  notice?" 

"Yes,  a  fortnight's  notice,"  said  the  secretary.  "The 
printing  manager  has  pledged  them  to  secrecy." 

Brandon  laughed  ironically. 

"That's  all  right.  The  secret  will  be  well  kept!  .  .  . 
A  fortnight,  you  say  ?  In  that  case  we  can  run  two  weeks 
before  putting  up  the  shutters." 

"Unless  the  notices  are  withdrawn,"  said  the  secretary. 
"Negotiations  are  in  progress " 

"Are  they  likely  to  be  successful?"  asked  Brandon 
bluntly. 

Richard  Featherstone  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Why  not?"  he  said.  "I  believe  there  is  every 
hope " 

Brandon  turned  on  his  heel  and  walked  away.  Lut- 
trell  joined  him,  and  they  went  up  to  the  reporters'  room. 

"This  is  a  black  business,"  said  Brandon  on  the  stairs. 

"What  does  it  mean  ?"  asked  Luttrell. 

"It  means  that  the  proprietor  has  gone  tired,  after 
spending  £200,000.  And  I  don't  wonder.  We  have  been 
a  dismal  failure  from  the  first,  owing  to  woeful  misman- 
agement and  robbery  on  a  large  scale." 

"Robbery?"  said  Frank. 

"Well,  that's  the  wrong  word — let's  call  it  extrava- 
gance." 

"How  about  reconstruction  ?"  asked  Frank. 

"Well,  there  may  be  other  big  fools  who  want  to  lose 


342  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

£100,000  a  year.  But  I  doubt  it.  There  are  not  many 
millionaires  like  Benjamin  Harrison,  who  is  as  innocent 
as  a  child,  and  as  weak  as  a  wax  doll.  Most  rich  men 
I  have  come  across  are  pretty  good  at  business.  That's 
how  they  get  rich." 

"Then  you  don't  think  we  have  a  chance  ?" 

Brandon  glared  at  him  gloomily. 

"I  reckon  we  shall  all  be  on  half  rations  before  long. 
.  .  .  There  is  just  one  chance.  Bellamy  may  get  the  Lib- 
eral Government  to  promise  a  peerage  to  some  rich  Jew 
scoundrel  who  wants  to  become  an  English  aristocrat." 

"Good  Lord!"  said  Frank,  gasping.  "You're  not  se- 
rious, are  you  ?" 

"Why  not  ?  There's  no  difficulty  in  getting  the  prom- 
ise of  a  peerage.  The  Liberal  party  don't  want  to  see  us 
go  under,  and  a  title  more  or  less  won't  cost  them  any- 
thing. The  difficulty  will  be  to  find  the  man  who  will  buy 
one  at  a  big  enough  price.  There  is  a  dreadful  slump  in 
the  market." 

In  the  reporters'  room  there  was  a  full  staff  with  the 
exception  of  Katherine  Halstead.  Even  the  parliament- 
ary men  had  come  down  early  to  discuss  the  grave  news. 
As  Luttrell  and  Brandon  went  in  the  room  was  buzzing 
with  excited  talk. 

Christopher  Codrington  was  very  pale,  but  he  seemed 
to  be  the  only  man  who  was  resolved  to  put  a  cheerful 
construction  upon  the  notices. 

"My  dear  good  fools,"  he  said,  lifting  his  hand  to  ob- 
tain a  silence  which  did  not  come,  "why  worry?  Tend- 
ing negotiations'  is  a  good  phrase.  I  stand  by  Bellamy. 
He  is  not  the  man  to  let  this  paper  go  under.  Any  doubt 
upon  the  subject  is  disloyalty  to  him.  Let  us  give  him 
the  support  of  our  confidence  in  this  grave  crisis." 

Brandon  laughed  at  him  scornfully. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  345 

"You  are  always  romantic,  Codrington.  Do  you  think 
even  Bellamy  can  find  a  market  for  damaged  goods?" 

Codrington  flushed  angrily. 

"Hush,"  he  said.  "Do  not  use  such  language,  Bran- 
don, I  beg  of  you.  It  is  most  indiscreet." 

He  looked  round  the  room  as  much  as  to  say  that  walls 
have  ears. 

"Is  all  our  brilliant  work  to  go  for  nothing?  Apart 
from  circulation  and  advertisements,  The  Liberal  is  the 
greatest  paper  in  the  world." 

"Why  certainly,"  said  Brandon,  with  deep  irony. 
"Apart  from  circulation  and  advertisements  we  are  al- 
most too  blatantly  and  indecently  prosperous!" 

"My  God!"  said  one  of  the  reporters.  "I  haven't 
dared  to  tell  my  wife  yet.  It  would  almost  kill  her  in 
her  present  state  of  health." 

"What  I  don't  like,"  said  another,  "is  those  words  'Pri- 
vate and  Confidential/  Why,  that  prevents  us  from  go- 
ing after  new  jobs !  I  don't  mind  saying  that  I  shall  en- 
tirely ignore  the  demand  for  secrecy.  Does  the  propri- 
etor think  we  are  fools  enough  to  work  out  our  notices 
to  the  bitter  end,  and  then  walk  out  into  the  street  with- 
out a  penny  to  fall  back  on  ?" 

Codrington  again  dominated  the  assembly.  With  his 
highly-polished  silk  hat  at  an  acute  angle  on  his  head, 
and  with  his  arms  folded  across  the  breast  of  his  beau- 
tiful frock  overcoat,  he  looked  like  Beau  Brummel  cal- 
culating his  losses  at  Brooks's. 

"I  trust,"  he  said  very  gravely,  "that  we  shall  not  hear 
such  words  again  in  this  room.  They  are  nothing  less  than 
treasonable.  If  we  have  any  pride  and  self-respect  let 
us  keep  this  pledge  of  confidence  as  a  sacred  duty.  If 
this  ship  is  to  sink — which  I  utterly  refuse  to  believe — 
let  us  go  down  with  flying  colours  and  doing  the  Birken- 
head  drill." 


344  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"In  other  and  simpler  words,"  said  Quin,  the  dramatic 
critic,  "let's  play  the  game." 

This  was  received  with  "Hear,  hear !"  from  most  of  the 
men  present. 

Vicary  came  downstairs  looking  very  gloomy.  He  was 
immediately  surrounded  by  the  men,  who  clamoured  for 
information. 

"I  don't  know  any  more  than  you,  boys,"  he  said.  "Of 
course  we  have  been  running  on  to  the  rocks  for  some 
time,  but  the  financial  side  was  no  business  of  mine.  My 
job  was  to  get  news  into  the  paper,  and  I  have  done  it  as 
well  as  I  know  how.  But,  of  course,  some  of  the  blight- 
ers here  knocked  the  bottom  out  of  things.  It  was  like 
building  a  house  on  a  quagmire." 

He  gave  his  colleagues  a  few  words  of  advice.  He  was 
going  on  with  his  job  without  any  flim-flam,  and  he  rec- 
ommended them  to  do  the  same.  "A  shut  mouth  catches 
no  flies"  was  a  good  old  proverb  with  a  lot  of  sense  in 
it.  With  that  oracular  utterance  Vicary  went  upstairs 
and  sat  in  front  of  his  telephone,  dealing  with  the  busi- 
ness of  the  day  in  his  usual  strenuous  way. 

But  in  the  reporters'  room  the  buzz  of  excited  con- 
versation continued  intermittently  throughout  the  day,  as 
men  came  and  went  with  grave  faces  and  serious  eyes; 
and  in  the  passages  other  men  collected  into  groups  of 
twos  and  threes,  whispering  together.  All  day  long  Bel- 
lamy remained  shut  up  in  his  room,  and  only  once  or 
twice  was  he  seen  through  the  open  door  sitting  at  his 
desk,  looking  rather  tired  and  troubled,  but  giving  his 
attention  to  the  business  manager,  the  advertising  man- 
ager, Featherstone,  the  secretary,  and  other  visitors.  At 
four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  news  was  brought  to 
the  reporters'  room  that  the  proprietor's  thousand-guinea 
Daimler  had  been  sighted  in  Fleet  Street.  The  report 
produced  a  sensation  among  the  men,  and  when  the  pro- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  345 

prietor  himself  came  upstairs  and  went  to  Bellamy's 
room,  a  strange  silence  succeeded  the  noise  of  many 
voices  speaking  together,  and  some  of  the  reporters  sat 
with  anxious  eyes  and  strained  attention,  and  spoke  only 
in  whispers,  while  others  went  constantly  into  the  pas- 
sage to  look  at  the  editor's  closed  door  from  which  no 
sound  came  out.  Frank  Luttrell  had  the  sensation  of  liv- 
ing in  the  midst  of  a  drama.  There  was  something  al- 
most unreal  and  theatrical  in  this  scene  of  men  whisper- 
ing and  watching  and  waiting  for  something  to  happen, 
though  nothing  happened.  It  was  like  a  scene  in  a  play 
where  the  characters  are  waiting  for  the  verdict  in  a  mur- 
der trial,  or  like  the  ante- room  of  a  death-chamber  where 
men  are  waiting  for  the  doctor  to  come  out  with  the 
word  that  all  is  over.  To  Luttrell  it  seemed  that  both 
these  ideas  were  terribly  appropriate  to  the  present  case. 
Inside  Bellamy's  room  there  was  a  trial  going  on  which 
meant  life  or  death  to  the  paper  for  which  all  these 
men  had  worked  so  zealously.  The  Rag,  as  they  called 
it,  was  not  an  inanimate  object  to  be  bought  or  sold  or 
broken  up  according  to  the  balance  of  profit  and  loss. 
It  was  a  real  living  thing.  Frank,  in  his  first  f retfulness 
against  the  system,  had  often  compared  the  newspaper 
to  a  grinding,  devouring  machine.  But  when  The  Lib- 
eral lay  at  death's  door  he  realised  that  it  had  a  life  and 
spirituality  of  its  own.  Day  by  day  its  voice  had  ex- 
pressed certain  facts  and  opinions  and  ideals.  Although 
many  different  minds  were  at  work  upon  it,  and  many 
different  pens  filled  its  columns,  the  paper  itself  had  only 
one  mind,  and  it  had  a  character  of  its  own  different  from 
that  of  all  other  papers.  If  the  paper  died  it  would  be 
more  than  the  breaking  up  of  so  much  type,  and  the  shut- 
ting up  of  a  big  building,  and  the  silence  of  great  ma- 
chines, and  the  absence  of  the  familiar  sheets  at  the 
breakfast-table.  It  would  mean  the  death  of  a  living 


346          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Idea,  the  silence  of  a  great  voice  that  had  helped  in  some 
measure,  perhaps,  to  shape  the  destinies  of  the  nation, 
certainly  to  give  men  knowledge,  to  mould  their  opinions, 
to  push  forward  certain  causes  of  good  or  evil.  To 
kill  such  a  paper  would  be  almost  like  murder ;  to  let  it 
die  without  every  effort  to  save  it  would  be  a  crime  of 
callous  cruelty. 

And  the  comparison  of  this  scene  to  that  of  a  group  of 
men  awaiting  a  verdict  of  life  or  death  was  not  too  fanci- 
ful. To  all  these  men  the  continuance  or  closing  down 
of  the  paper  meant  almost  that.  There  were  elderly  men 
who  would  not  find  it  easy  to  begin  again.  Inevitably  if 
the  ship  went  down  they  would  sink  into  the  great  abyss. 
There  were  young  men  just  launched  upon  the  sea  of  life 
— one  of  them  had  been  married  just  a  year  and  was 
the  father  of  a  one-day-old  child — who  would  have  a 
terrible  struggle  if  they  were  washed  overboard.  Frank 
knew  himself  how  difficult  it  is  to  get  hold  bf  any  floating 
planks  to  keep  one's  head  above  water.  All  of  these 
men  lived  up  to  their  income,  and  some  of  them  beyond 
it.  Even  a  few  months  of  enforced  idleness  would  drag 
them  into  debt.  Those  with  wives  and  children  would  be 
faced  by  the  grim  spectres  of  hopeless  anxiety  or  of  that 
hope  deferred  which  maketh  the  heart  sick.  To  all  these 
men,  therefore,  the  verdict  that  would  come  from  Bel- 
lamy's room,  condemning  the  paper  to  death,  or  giving  it 
a  new  lease  of  life,  was  of  supreme  and  vital  importance. 

Few  of  them  bolstered  themselves  up  with  false  hopes. 
They  knew  more  of  the  financial  side  of  the  paper  than 
Luttrell,  and  they  expected  the  worst.  They  talked 
ghoulishly  of  the  death-rattle,  and  were  already  prepar- 
ing for  the  funeral.  But  with  that  curious  freak  in 
psychology,  which  is  always  apparent  when  a  number 
of  people  are  gathered  together  in  the  presence  of  death 
or  approaching  death,  these  men  were  affected  by  a  mor- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  347 

bid  inclination  to  laugh  in  spite  of  their  anxiety.  Quin 
made  gay  little  jests  in  a  whisper  outside  Bellamy's  door, 
which  convulsed  the  men  to  whom  he  was  talking.  Even 
Brandon's  grim  jokes  about  corpses  or  coffins  excited 
the  sensibility  of  his  audience,  and  more  than  once  a  gust 
of  laughter  shook  the  reporters'  room,  though  Codring- 
ton,  whose  gravity  was  imperturbable,  raised  his  hand 
and  said  "Hush"  as  if  such  hilarity  were  indecent.  The 
men  who  laughed  most  were  those  who  were  most  afraid. 
The  young  reporter  who  had  the  one-day-old  baby  at 
home  was  as  white  as  his  collar,  but  he  laughed  hyster- 
ically at  any  jesting  remark  until  tears  came  into  his  eyes. 
Luttrell  was  in  the  passage  when  the  proprietor  came 
out  of  Bellamy's  room.  He  was  in  a  long  motor-coat 
with  a  big  fur  collar,  and  he  hurried  by  in  a  nervous  way 
with  a  flushed  and  rather  haggard  face  and  tired  eyes. 
Luttrell  had  often  seen  that  tall  young  man,  who  was 
alleged  to  have  an  income  of  £300,000  a  year  and  a  bank 
balance  of  three  and  a  half  millions.  Before  Luttrell 
knew  him  to  be  proprietor  of  the  paper  he  had  put  him 
down  as  a  distinguished  literary  man,  perhaps  even  as 
a  prosperous  playwright,  which  would  account  for  the 
fur  round  his  neck.  He  had  a  long,  lean,  handsome  face 
with  dark,  dreamy,  mournful  and  rather  haunting  eyes. 
Luttrell  had  been  staggered  when  Codrington  had  pointed 
this  figure  out  one  day  as  Benjamin  Harrison,  the  mil- 
lionaire. Without  knowing  anything  of  his  character  or 
history  Luttrell  had  been  struck  with  an  indefinable  pity 
for  the  man.  His  millions  had  certainly  not  brought  him 
happiness.  He  seemed  like  a  man  overburdened  with  a 
tragic  responsibility.  His  face  when  it  was  not  animated 
by  conversation  was  extraordinarily  sad,  and  in  the 
depths  of  his  dark  eyes  there  was  a  profound  melancholy. 
As  he  passed  down  the  stairs  this  evening  he  had  a  hunted 


348          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

look.  He  was  like  a  man  who  is  encompassed  on  every 
hand  by  enemies  and  who  is  seeking  a  way  of  escape. 

Silas  Bellamy  came  out  of  his  room  now,  and  as  he 
passed  along  the  passage  he  heard  the  laughter  in  the  re- 
porters' room.  It  seemed  to  surprise  him,  and  after  a 
moment's  hesitation  he  pushed  open  the  door  and  went 
in.  This  appearance  of  the  Chief  produced  an  instant 
silence,  and  then  Codrington  said,  "Is  there  any  news, 
sir?'1 

"News?  News?"  said  Bellamy,  as  though  he  could 
not  understand  the  question.  "News  of  what?"  Then 
he  put  his  hands  to  his  eyes  as  though  they  were  very 
tired  and  said  "No  .  .  .  there  won't  be  any  news  for  a 
week  or  more.  You  boys  must  be  patient.  Are  you 
downhearted  ?" 

There  was  a  cry  of  "No";  and  Codrington  said,  "We 
trust  the  man  at  the  helm." 

"You  couldn't  do  better,"  said  Bellamy,  smiling.  Then 
he  added,  more  seriously,  "You  may  trust  me  at  least 
as  far  as  this :  I  will  do  my  best  for  you  all." 

He  seemed  gratified  when  there  was  a  unanimous  and 
enthusiastic  expression  of  confidence  in  him,  and  for  a 
moment  there  was  a  twinkling  moisture  in  his  eyes. 

"Who  will  come  out  and  have  some  tea  with  me  ?" 

There  was  a  general  response  to  the  invitation,  but  Bel- 
lamy said,  "I  will  have  Luttrell  here.  He  is  a  quiet  and 
restful  young  man,  and  won't  ask  awkward  questions." 

Luttrell  felt  the  honour  of  the  choice,  and  blushed  with 
pleasure  and  at  the  laughter  of  his  colleagues. 

He  had  tea  with  Bellamy  in  the  smoking-room  of  an 
hotel  in  a  neighboring  court.  The  little  Chief  seemed 
to  have  recovered  his  spirits,  and  told  funny  stories  as 
usual  as  though  no  crisis  were  happening.  But  towards 
the  end  of  an  hour  he  said,  after  silence  during  which  he 
smoked  his  cigar  thoughtfully — 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  349 

"Luttrell,  some  people  make  me  tired." 

"Am  I  one  of  them?" 

Bellamy  laughed,  and  said,  "No,  not  now,  anyhow. 
But  I  don't  know  which  is  worse,  a  bad  man  or  a  weak 
one." 

He  was  silent  again,  and  then  said  with  apparent  ir- 
relevance, "It  will  be  a  wicked  thing  anyhow,  if  the  paper 
goes  under.  To  found  a  newspaper  is  just  like  building 
a  railway,  say  from  Charing  Cross  to  Hampstead.  Every 
yard  of  the  tunnel  costs  a  lot  of  money,  and  by  the  time 
you  have  got  within  a  mile  of  Hampstead  you  have  spent 
a  fortune  without  getting  a  halfpenny  back.  But  what 
would  you  say  to  a  railway  company  which  stops  within 
a  mile  of  its  terminus,  just  one  mile  before  it  begins  to 
take  fares?" 

"It  would  be  mad,"  said  Frank. 

"Well,  Benjamin  Harrison,  of  Bristol  City,  wants  to 
stop  within  a  mile  of  Hampstead,"  said  Bellamy. 

"I  don't  want  to  ask  questions,"  said  Frank,  "but  is 
there  any  real  chance  of  reconstruction?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  think  so,"  said  Bellamy.  Then  he  added 
less  doubtfully,  "Heaps  of  chances,  of  course.  What  I 
have  got  to  do  is  to  make  one  of  them  a  certainty." 

He  seemed  to  think  that  he  had  spoken  more  than  he 
ought  to  have  done,  and  when  he  got  up  and  put  on  his 
overcoat  he  said,  "Don't  you  repeat  a  word  of  this  to 
the  boys.  I  think  I  can  trust  you,  Luttrell." 

"Oh,  rather !"  said  Frank. 

They  went  back  to  the  office  in  silence,  and  Bellamy 
just  nodded  to  Luttrell  in  a  friendly  way  at  the  door  of 
his  own  room.  In  the  reporters'  room  Frank  was  ques- 
tioned eagerly  by  his  colleagues.  "What  did  he  say? 
Did 'he  tell  you  any  news?" 

"Nothing  whatever,"  said  Frank.  "He  seemed  pretty 
cheerful." 


350  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

But  the  men  evidently  disbelieved  him,  and  Codring- 
ton  took  him  apart  in  a  mysterious  way  down  to  the  end 
of  the  corridor. 

"Judging  from  your  serious  face,"  he  said,  "Bellamy 
must  have  told  you  bad  news." 

"He  told  me  nothing.     Absolutely  nothing." 

"Oh,"  said  Codrington  doubtfully.  Then  he  added 
gravely,  "Far  be  it  from  me  to  ask  you  to  break  any 
pledge  of  confidence.  But  naturally  we  are  all  anxious." 

He  asked  Frank  to  go  out  and  have  something  to  drink 
with  him.  He  admitted  that  his  nerves  had  been  serious- 
ly shaken,  and  he  thought  a  pick-me-up  would  do  them 
both  good. 

"This  is  a  terrible  affair,"  he  said.  "Terrible.  Until 
the  crisis  is  over  I  shall  be  living  in  a  continual  night- 
mare." 

"What  will  you  do  if  the  worst  happens  ?"  asked  Frank. 

Codrington's  eyes  widened  with  horror. 

"Hush !"  he  said.  "For  God's  sake  ...  do  not  men- 
tion such  a  thing!  It  is  too  awful." 

Luttrell  was  unable  to  go  outside  with  him,  because 
he  was  looking  for  Margaret  Hubbard.  He  had  been 
looking  for  her  most  of  the  day,  but  she  had  sent  a  note 
round  by  one  of  her  assistants  saying  that  she  would  not 
be  at  the  office  until  four  or  five  o'clock.  It  was  now 
six  o'clock,  and  Frank  heard  from  the  clerk-in-charge 
that  Miss  Hubbard  had  just  arrived.  He  went  to  her 
room  and  found  her  working  quietly  at  her  desk.  She 
looked  up  as  he  crossed  the  floor,  and  said — 

"Well,  Frank.  Everybody  seems  to  have  the  blues 
to-day.  What's  the  meaning  of  those  notices?  Are  we 
really  doomed  ?" 

"Goodness  knows.    Tell  me,  how  is  Katherine?" 

Margaret  smiled. 

"Oh,  naturally  Miss  Katherine  Halstead's  health  is  of 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  351 

vastly  more  importance  than  the  fate  of  five  hundred 
other  souls." 

"Yes,"  said  Frank,  "to  me.  How  is  she?  I  am 
frightfully  anxious." 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  deserve  to  be  told.  Her 
illness  is  entirely  due  to  your  own  evil  deeds." 

She  spoke  with  mock  severity,  but  Frank  cried  out 
again — 

"For  heaven's  sake,  tell  me — is  she  really  ill?" 

"No,"  said  Margaret.  "She  is  suffering  from  what 
used  to  be  called  in  Jane  Austen's  days  'the  vapours/ 
which  means  that  she  is  angry  with  you  and  ashamed  of 
herself,  and  irritable  with  me.  She  has  cried  herself  into 
a  feverish  headache." 

"Good  God!"  said  Frank,  as  if  a  feverish  headache 
were  a  deadly  disease. 

"Now,  look  here,  young  man/'  said  Margaret  to  the 
man  who  was  just  a  few  years  younger  than  herself. 
"Of  course,  I  have  got  to  talk  to  you  seriously,  but  I  am 
not  going  to  lose  my  sense  of  proportion  or  my  confi- 
dence in  your  respectability,  so  don't  be  scared.  Who 
was  that  young  woman  in  your  flat  last  night  ?  It  is  not 
my  business,  I  know,  but  I  fancy  that  it  is  {Catherine's 
business,  considering  the  proposal  with  which  you  have 
honoured  her." 

Frank  hesitated. 

"She  has  nothing  to  do  with  me,"  he  said.  "She  is 
another  man's  secret,  and  I  pledged  my  word  to  him  to 
say  nothing  about  it  to  a  living  soul." 

"Hum !"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.  "That  is  awkward, 
certainly.  Can't  you  produce  the  other  man,  or  get  him 
to  release  you  from  your  sacred  pledge  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank.  "I  have  been  thinking  it  over, 
and  I  have  decided  to  let  the  other  man  tell  the  story.  It 


352          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

will  not  only  clear  me,  but  I  believe  you  will  be  able  to 
help  him." 

"Oh,  that  is  excellent,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard.  "I 
have  a  genius  for  putting  my  finger  into  other  people's 
pies.  Needless  to  say,  I  always  burn  my  own  fingers." 

Frank  asked  permission  to  ring  the  bell,  and  when  a 
boy  came  he  told  him  to  ask  Mr.  Brandon  to  step  that 
way. 

Margaret  Hubbard  opened  her  eyes. 

"Oh;  it's  Brandon's  mystery,  is  it?  That  is  character- 
istic of  him." 

When  Brandon  came  in,  looking  surprised  at  the  sum- 
mons, Frank  said  quietly — 

"Brandon,  I  want  you  to  tell  Margaret  Hubbard  about 
Peg." 

For  a  moment  Brandon  flushed  deeply,  and  frowned 
over  at  Frank  with  an  ugly  look  on  his  face. 

"I  thought  that  was  my  secret,"  he  said.  "And  I 
thought  you  were  a  gentleman." 

"We  will  leave  the  second  point  out  of  the  question," 
said  Frank.  "With  regard  to  the  first,  it  is  no  longer 
your  secret  entirely.  I  have  been  mixed  up  with  it,  and 
you  owe  it  to  me,  I  think,  to  clear  me  in  the  eyes  of  Mar- 
garet Hubbard  and  Katherine  Halstead." 

In  a  few  words  he  explained  the  situation  in  which 
he  found  himself,  and  before  he  had  finished  the  frown 
passed  off  Brandon's  face. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  he  said  warmly,  "I  am  truly  sorry. 
I  had  no  idea " 

Then  he  turned  to  Margaret  and  said,  "As  a  matter  of 
fact,  I  was  going  to  consult  you  anyhow.  I  want  the 
advice  of  a  wise,  good  woman.  I  have  been  making  a 
desperate  fool  of  myself.  .  .  .  Frank,  do  you  mind?" 

"Certainly,"  said  Frank,  and  left  the  room,  shutting 
the  door  behind  him  quietly. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  353 

An  hour  afterwards  Brandon  came  into  the  reporters' 
room,  and  said  in  a  casual  way  before  the  other  men, 
"Luttrell,  Mother  Hubbard  wants  to  speak  to  you." 

When  Frank  went  into  Margaret's  room  again  she  was 
standing,  waiting  for  him,  and  she  took  both  his  hands 
and  said,  "Frank,  you  have  been  a  good  and  brave  fellow. 
I  think  Katherine  will  admire  you  very  much  when  I 
tell  her  something  about  this  queer  story.  And  I  think 
she  will  be  even  more  ashamed  of  herself,  poor  child." 

"No,"  said  Frank.  "No.  She  had  every  right  to  sus- 
pect— to  feel  uneasy — men  are  such  brutes." 

Then  he  said  in  rather  a  husky  voice :  "I  am  so  glad  it 
is  all  cleared  up  ...  thanks  to  you,  dear  Mother  Hub- 
bard.  What  should  we  all  do  without  you?" 

"I  am  sure  I  don't  know,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard. 
"You  are  all  very  troublesome  and  foolish  children.  I 

will  give  you  some  broth  without  any  bread "  She 

stopped  and  then  said  in  a  kind  of  whisper,  "Oh,  oh 
perhaps  some  of  us  won't  have  any  broth,  or  any  bread 
either,  in  a  little  while.  .  .  .  Frank,  I  hardly  like  to  think 
of  what  is  going  to  happen  to  some  of  these  young  men, 
and  old  men,  if  the  worst  happens.  I  can  only  pray  that 
the  worst  will  not  happen." 

She  clasped  her  hands  and  stared  at  him  in  a  tragic 
way. 

"All  these  husbands  and  fathers  of  children !  All  those 
poor  printers  and  their  little  homes!  ...  I  know  what 
it  is  when  five  or  six  men  are  thrown  out  of  a  paper.  It 
is  always  a  tragedy.  Some  of  them  always  go  under. 
But  I  have  never  known  a  great  paper  to  go  down  with 
a  full  staff.  Five  hundred  men  thrown  into  the  street 
at  once — it  is  too  horrible !" 

Frank  protested  that  there  was  every  hope  of  recon- 
struction. He  refused  to  believe  that  such  a  great  paper 


354  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

would  be  allowed  to  die.  But  Margaret  Hubbard  shook 
her  head. 

"We  have  been  in  a  bad  way  for  a  long  while.  We 
have  made  no  real  headway.  And  I  know  from  private 
friends  that  Benjamin  Harrison  is  tired  of  losing  his 
money.  He  has  awakened  to  the  fact  that  certain  men 
here  on  the  business  side  have  been  victimising  him,  and 
wasting  his  money  with  almost  criminal  extravagance. 
He  has  made  up  his  mind  to  put  an  end  to  it  all." 

"But  surely  he  realises  all  the  suffering  it  will  mean  ?" 
cried  Frank. 

"No,  he  doesn't  understand." 

"Can't  he  afford  to  go  on  losing  money?  We  are 
bound  to  turn  the  corner  eventually." 

"It  hurts  him  to  lose  money.  He  has  got  the  blood  of 
his  father,  who  made  millions  by  saving  sixpences.  I 
know  something  of  his  family  history,  and  the  Harrisons 
know  how  to  earn  but  not  how  to  spend.  His  money  is 
a  curse  to  him  and  for  that  very  reason.  He  is  haunted 
by  the  thought  of  losing  it.  He  suspects  every  man  to 
be  a  rook  eager  to  pluck  him  as  a  pigeon  .  .  .  and  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  that  idea." 

"Somebody  will  step  in  to  buy  the  paper/'  said  Frank. 
"It  is  a  good  hobby  for  a  rich  man." 

"There  are  few  men  rich  enough  to  lose  £100,000  a  year 
with  a  smiling  face,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard,  repeating 
Brandon  almost  word  for  word.  "Besides,"  she  added, 
looking  towards  the  door  cautiously,  "there  are  wheels 
within  wheels.  You  have  no  idea  of  the  intrigues  inside 
and  outside  this  office.  I  have  heard  a  good  deal  from 
Edmund  Grattan,  who  knows  everybody  and  everything 
in  the  newspaper  world.  Poor  Silas  Bellamy  has  got  to 
steer  his  way  through  many  cross-currents  and  sunken 
reefs." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  355 

"Is  it  as  bad  as  that?"  said  Frank  gloomily.  "What 
shall  we  all  do?" 

"I  suppose  we  shall  have  to  take  in  each  other's  wash- 
ing," said  Margaret  Hubbard,  with  a  laugh  and  a  brave 
attempt  to  regain  her  cheerfulness. 

Frank  had  a  better  reason  for  cheerfulness. 

"You  will  put  it  all  right  with  Katherine?"  he  said 
"Will  you  give  her  my  love  when  you  see  her  ?" 

"I'll  be  hanged  if  I  do,"  said  Mother  Hubbard  with 
the  slang  which  she  had  picked  up  by  living  so  much 
among  men.  "Give  it  her  yourself,  you  lazy  fellow." 

That  evening  Frank  acted  upon  Margaret  Hubbard's 
advice  and  gave  Katherine  his  love  by  word  of  mouth. 
He  called  at  the  flat  and  found  that  Katherine's  feverish 
headache  had  entirely  disappeared.  But  she  looked  very 
serious.  The  news  about  the  office  had  come  to  her  as 
a  great  shock,  and,  like  Margaret,  she  was  more  dis- 
mayed at  the  thought  of  what  would  happen  to  all  her 
colleagues  than  at  the  prospect  of  her  own  time  of  trouble 
if  the  great  disaster  happened.  In  the  face  of  that  her 
misunderstanding  with  Frank  seemed  insignificant  and 
trivial.  Yet  she  was  embarrassed  when  he  first  came 
in,  and  blushed  so  deeply  when  he  took  her  hand  that 
Frank  dared  not  look  into  her  face.  They  were  alone, 
for  Margaret  had  slipped  into  another  room  and  Kath- 
erine said  with  a  brave  humility — brave  because  she  was 
very  proud — "I  have  to  abase  myself  before  you.  Will 
you  forgive  my  foolishness  ?  I  was  too  utterly  ridiculous, 
and  I  am  very  much  ashamed." 

"Hush!"  said  Frank.  "Let  us  forget  the  stupid  inci- 
dent— or  laugh  at  it !  I  behaved  like  a  blundering  idiot." 

She  did  not  say  any  more  on  a  subject  which  still 
seemed  painful  to  her,  and  she  seemed  relieved  when 
Margaret  Hubbard  came  back.  The  conversation  that 
evening  between  Frank  and  these  two  women  was  rather 


356  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

subdued  and  serious.  The  shadow  of  an  approaching 
tragedy  seemed  to  have  fallen  upon  them.  Yet  it  was 
not  any  selfish  fear  which  made  them  dispirited  and  anx- 
ious. When  they  spoke  of  their  own  future  they  used 
brave  words.  They  would  be  able  to  "manage"  somehow 
or  other.  But  it  was  the  thought  of  other  men  and  wom- 
en which  troubled  them,  and  the  downfall  of  the  paper 
for  which  they  had  worked  with  a  loyalty  and  enthusi- 
asm which  would  now  be  made  so  vain  and  fruitless. 
Perhaps  Frank  was  the  selfish  one.  When  his  eyes  stole 
over  to  Katherine  he  was  full  of  pity  for  himself  to  think 
that  as  an  honest  man  he  would  have  no  right  to  ask 
for  an  answer  to  the  question  which  he  had  asked  once 
before.  Katherine  had  postponed  her  answer  then,  and 
now  perhaps  the  years  would  slip  by  in  a  hopeless  way 
for  him. 

Margaret  Hubbard  noticed  his  gloomy  looks  and  said, 
"Cheer  up,  Frank.  Never  say  die !" 

He  laughed  and  tried  manfully  to  face  his  fate  with 
pluck,  whatever  it  might  be.  The  quiet  courage  of  these 
two  girls  seemed  to  him  wonderful  and  beautiful,  and  he 
was  thankful  at  least  that  they  would  be  his  comrades 
in  any  future  struggle.  He  would  not  have  to  face  the 
frightful  loneliness  of  his  early  days  as  a  freelance  in 
London. 

When  he  left  the  flat  that  evening  Katherine  put  up  her 
face  for  him  to  kiss,  and  he  went  out  into  the  streets 
with  new  courage  and  new  hope.  It  is  strange  how  a 
woman's  kiss  may  act  like  magic  in  a  man's  heart. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  month  following  the  issue  of  the  notices  to  the 
staff  of  The  Liberal  was  a  strain  upon  the  nerves  of  the 
most  hardened  journalist  of  that  paper.  To  Frank  Lut- 
trell,  who  was  less  hardened  than  any  of  them,  it  was 
a  long-drawn  period  of  suspense  which  made  him  quite 
feverish  at  night  when  he  turned  and  tossed  in  his  bed 
wondering  whether  the  morrow  would  bring  forth  an  of- 
ficial statement  ending  one  way  or  the  other  a  situation 
which,  after  the  first  week,  had  become  quite  intolerable. 
But  every  day  came  and  went  without  the  expected  an- 
nouncement being  given.  Rumours  flew  up  and  down 
the  passages  with  extraordinary  rapidity.  Some  one 
heard  from  some  one  else,  who  had  been  given  the 
"straight  tip"  from  the  business  manager  or  the  advertis- 
ing manager,  or  the  secretary,  or  the  chief  leader-writer, 
that  the  negotiations  had  been  satisfactorily  completed, 
and  that  the  whole  staff  was  to  be  summoned  into  the 
Board  Room  to  have  their  notices  cancelled,  and  to  be 
introduced  to  the  new  proprietors.  This  information,  re- 
peated at  intervals  from  different  sources,  was  disproved 
by  the  days  which  passed  without  such  a  glad  assembly. 
Another  rumour  started  with  equal  "certainty"  that  the 
proprietor  was  coming  in  that  very  evening  after  the 
paper  had  gone  to  bed  to  shut  up  shop.  But  "that  very 
evening"  passed  like  the  others  without  a  word  from  the 
authorities. 

Many  strange  visitors  went  into  Bellamy's  room,  or 
into  Benjamin  Harrison's  room,  and  remained  there  for 
an  hour  or  more,  while  men  went  whispering  about  the 

357 


358          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

passages,  believing  that  the  crisis  was  being  settled.  Some 
of  these  visitors  had  hook  noses  and  fur-lined  overcoats, 
the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  Hebrew  blood  and 
wealth.  Others  were  gouty  or  wheezy  old  gentlemen 
who  looked  like  English  aristocrats,  but  might  have  been 
creditors  pressing  for  the  settlement  of  accounts  in  view 
of  the  ugly  rumours  persistent  in  the  City  as  to  the  in- 
stability of  the  paper.  One  man  was  recognised  unmis- 
takably by  the  parliamentary  reporters  as  the  chief  Lib- 
eral Whip,  and  perhaps  it  was  the  appearance  of  this  im- 
portant personage  which  accounted  for  the  unofficial 
statement  which  buoyed  up  all  hearts  with  the  "fact" 
that  the  Government  had  agreed  to  subsidise  the  paper  for 
a  certain  time,  and  to  offer  one  peerage  and  five  baron- 
etcies to  any  group  of  men  who  would  undertake  to  run 
the  paper  on  strict  Party  lines.  This  seemed  really  gen- 
erous (leaving  high  ethics  out  of  the  question)  on  the 
part  of  the  Government,  and  the  barometer  rose  steadily 
in  the  office  until  it  was  counteracted  by  a  new  rumour 
which  came  straight  from  the  advertising  manager's  pri- 
vate secretary  and  typist.  This  was  to  the  effect  that 
the  chief  Liberal  Whip  had  said,  with  really  cruel  can- 
dour, that  The  Liberal  had  never  been  worth  a  damn  to 
the  Party  and  that  he  would  not  lift  a  little  finger  to  save 
it  from  that  death  it  so  richly  deserved. 

It  was  known  (or  at  least  reported)  that  terrible  in- 
trigues were  on  foot  inside  the  office.  The  business  man- 
ager was  treacherous  to  Bellamy  and  playing  a  dark  and 
subtle  game  of  his  own.  The  advertising  manager  was 
the  leader  of  a  campaign  against  all  other  authorities,  and 
was  attempting  to  raise  capital  among  a  group  of  Liberal 
Imperialists  who  were  anxious  to  get  hold  of  a  big  Lon- 
don daily.  One  of  the  leader-writers,  who  had  been 
closeted  for  many  hours  with  the  proprietor,  was  hand  in 
glove  with  the  Temperance  party  in  the  House  and  coun- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  359 

try,  who  were  ready  to  bring  in  new  capital  if  Benjamin 
Harrison  would  put  down  another  £50,000  and  continue 
his  position  as  Governing  Director.  One  condition  they 
made  was  a  complete  change  of  editorial  and  business 
control,  and  the  junior  leader-writer  who  was  acting  as 
intermediary  in  the  affair  was  already  nominated  as  edi- 
tor-in-chief. 

How  much  truth,  if  any,  there  was  in  any  of  these  state- 
ments could  not  be  guessed  by  Frank  Luttrell,  to  whom 
they  came  from  this  colleague  or  that.  At  first,  as  each 
one  reached  him,  his  hopes  were  buoyed  up  or  dashed 
down  according  to  the  character  of  the  information,  but 
at  last,  when  a  fortnight  had  nearly  passed,  he  became 
deeply  skeptical,  and  declined  to  give  credence  to  any- 
thing but  an  official  announcement  of  indisputable  au- 
thority. 

A  remarkable  scene  took  place  on  the  night  of  the 
thirteenth  day  since  the  issue  of  those  letters  marked 
"Private  and  Confidential ."  It  was  known  to  every  one 
that  an  announcement  of  some  sort  was  bound  to  be  de- 
livered before  midnight.  The  compositors  were  fort- 
nightly men,  and  if  the  paper  were  to  live  another  day  it 
would  be  necessary,  according  to  Trade  Union  rules,  to 
re-engage  them  for  another  two  weeks  before  they  left 
work.  Already  they  had  been  restless  and  almost  re- 
bellious. Indeed,  when  they  went  into  the  composing- 
room  on  this  evening  of  the  thirteenth,  several  of  the 
men  had  declined  to  put  on  their  aprons  or  do  a  stroke 
of  work  until  their  notices  had  been  rescinded.  They 
swore  that  they  would  not  be  made  fools  of  any  longer. 
They  had  gone  on  loyally  up  to  the  last  day,  believing 
that  every  day  would  bring  good  news,  and  they  would 
wait  no  longer.  They  had  a  right  to  know  what  their 
fate  was  to  be.  They  had  a  hard  job  to  keep  their  wives 


360  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

quiet  all  this  while,  and  it  was  about  time  the  situation 
was  ended  or  mended. 

The  printing  manager  had  a  short  way  with  rebels. 

"The  first  man  who  knocks  off  work  before  the  paper 
is  through  will  be  floored  by  this  fist,"  he  said,  showing 
a  row  of  very  hard  knuckles  at  the  end  of  a  long  and 
brawny  arm.  "Then  I  will  report  him  to  the  Union." 

Having  brought  them  back  to  a  sense  of  their  duty  he 
agreed  with  many  deep  and  dreadful  oaths  that  he  would 
get  a  definite  statement  from  Benjamin  Harrison  that 
night  if  he  had  to  choke  it  out  of  him.  There  and  then 
he  marched  down  to  the  proprietor's  room,  with  a  square 
jaw  set  in  a  dogged  way,  and  with  a  bang  on  the  door 
strode  in  without  ceremony.  In  two  minutes  he  came 
out  again  with  the  proprietor's  pledge  that  he  would  re- 
ceive the  Father  of  the  Chapel  and  three  of  the  com- 
positors at  three  minutes  before  midnight,  when  he  would 
fix  his  decision  about  the  notices. 

When  the  printing  manager  came  out  of  the  proprie- 
tor's room  he  was  instantly  button-holed  by  Codrington, 
who  took  him  into  a  small  room  where  he  had  a  whisky 
bottle  and  glasses.  Codrington  beckoned  Luttrell  to  join 
him  and  then  closed  the  door. 

"What  do  you  want,  gentlemen?''  said  the  printer. 

"I  want  you  to  have  a  glass  of  whisky,"  said  Codring- 
ton. "It  will  do  you  good." 

"I  am  not  saying  it  won't,"  said  the  man,  pouring  him- 
self out  a  stiff  dose.  "This  is  going  to  be  a  nervous  sort 
of  night.  The  men  want  a  lot  of  careful  handling  up- 
stairs. If  the  proprietor  plays  any  bogey  tricks  with 
them,  or  refuses  to  give  a  plain  answer  to  a  plain  ques- 
tion, there'll  be  something  like  a  riot." 

"Tell  me,"  said  Codrington.  "What  did  he  say,  and 
how  does  he  look  ?" 

"He  refused  to  make  any  statement  until  five  min- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  361 

utes  to  twelve,  and  he  looks  like  a  man  who  is  going  to 
commit  a  murder.  It  is  my  firm  belief,  gentlemen,  that 
we  put  up  our  shutters  to-night.  Then  God  help  the 
men  and  their  women  and  children." 

Codrington  put  down  his  tumbler,  and  his  whisky 
slopped  over  the  brim.  He  was  as  white  as  a  ghost,  and 
wiped  some  beads  of  cold  sweat  off  his  forehead  with  a 
trembling  hand. 

"This  is  a  terrible  situation,"  he  said.  "The  strain  is 
unendurable."  Then  he  pulled  himself  together  a  little, 
and  said,  with  a  kind  of  desperate  courage,  "Let  us  be 
calm,  my  friends.  Let  us  play  the  game  like  gentlemen." 

"There  are  some  men  in  this  office  that  never  played 
the  game  in  their  lives,"  said  the  printing  manager.  He 
strode  out  of  the  room,  and  went  up-stairs  to  his  own 
place,  and  Codrington  put  his  hand  on  Frank's  shoulders 
and  said,  "We  must  see  this  night  out,  Luttrell.  For 
the  first  time  since  the  crisis  I  have  the  most  gloomy 
forebodings." 

By  common  consent,  uncommunicated  and  un- 
expressed, the  full  staff  of  the  paper  remained  at  their 
posts  waiting  for  midnight.  Even  the  day  men,  who  us- 
ually left,  the  office  at  six  or  seven,  stayed  on,  and  the  re- 
porters who  had  finished  writing  their  copy  for  the  next 
day's  paper,  which  many  of  them  believed  would  be  the 
last,  smoked  cigarettes  for  hour  after  hour,  until  the 
room  was  filled  with  a  blue  haze.  But  the  men  who  had 
come  in  late  with  "stories"  were  still  writing  at  their 
desks  regardless  of  the  buzz  of  conversation  around  them, 
of  the  shifting  groups  in  the  passages,  and  of  the  elec- 
tricity in  the  atmosphere  of  this  night  of  crisis.  Whether 
the  paper  died  or  lived  it  would  have  to  be  filled  to-night, 
and  these  men  were  faithful  to  the  law.  In  other  rooms 
the  leader-writers  and  sub-editors  were  at  work  as  usual, 
writing  and  shaping  the  copy  which  recorded  the  day's 


362  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

history.  All  these  men  were  filled  with  the  gravest  anx- 
iety. Many  of  them  had  left  weeping  wives  at  home. 
The  prospect  was  very  gloomy  for  every  man  of  them. 
But  they  did  their  duty  quietly  and  unflinchingly.  In 
their  way  they  lived  up  to  the  traditions  of  the  race.  It 
is,  perhaps,  easier  for  a  sailor  to  stand  to  the  pumps  on  a 
sinking  ship  than  for  a  man  to  pump  his  brains  for  a  lead- 
ing article,  when  he  knows  that  in  a  few  hours  the  paper 
may  go  down  with  all  its  staff. 

In  the  reporters'  room  Katherine  Halstead  sat  at  her 
desk  though  she  had  finished  her  day's  work,  and  Mar- 
garet Hubbard  came  from  her  own  room  to  join  her  col- 
leagues who  were  waiting  for  the  statement.  Brandon 
was  there,  silent  and  very  moody,  and  Quin,  des- 
perately cheerful,  and  the  little  sporting-editor,  with  dark 
lines  under  his  eyes,  and  twisting  his  moustache  until 
it  was  a  wonder  a  hair  was  left  on  his  upper  lip.  The 
room  was  littered  with  papers,  and  on  some  of  the  desks 
were  plates  with  the  remains  of  meals,  and  coffee-cups 
and  sloppy  saucers  which  had  been  used  for  tobacco- 
ash.  The  atmosphere  was  poisoned  by  the  stale  smoke  of 
cheap  cigarettes,  and  at  ten  o'clock  Margaret  Hubbard, 
who  had  been  talking  quietly  to  Frank  and  Katherine 
in  a  corner  of  the  room,  stood  up  and  put  her  hands  to 
her  throat,  as  though  she  were  suffocating. 

"This  is  awful.  Let  us  get  outside  into  the  fresh  air 
for  a  while." 

"I  think  so  too,"  said  Frank.  "Will  you  come,  Kath- 
erine?" 

They  went  out  on  to  the  Embankment.  It  was  a  beau- 
tiful spring  night,  and  the  air  was  delicious.  Katherine 
took  off  her  hat,  and  let  the  wind  blow  through  her  hair. 
"Oh,  this  is  divine,  after  that  awful  room,"  she  said,  lift- 
ing her  face  up  and  drawing  a  deep  breath. 

"It  will  steady  our  nerves  down,"  said  Margaret  Hub- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  363 

bard.  "I  was  becoming  quite  jumpy  and  hysterical.. 
And  it  is  so  foolish  to  worry  oneself  into  fiddle-strings. 
Whatever  happens  it  is  not  a  bit  of  good  losing  self-con- 
trol." 

Katherine  put  her  hand  through  Frank's  arm. 

"The  poor  old  Rag"  she  said.  "I  shall  cry  my  eyes 
out  if  it  goes  under." 

"Oh,  you  emotional  goose,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard. 
"What  good  will  that  do,  I  wonder  ?  It's  no  good  crying 
over  spilt  type." 

The  two  girls  talked  of  the  paper's  achievements,  of 
"scoops"  which  had  excited  envy  and  admiration  in  Fleet 
Street,  of  gallant  deeds  done  in  the  pursuit  of  news  by 
Brandon  and  Codrington  and  others,  and  of  the  charm- 
ing articles  by  this  man  or  that,  which  had  given  a  liter- 
ary prestige  to  the  paper.  It  seemed  sad  to  them  that  all 
that  work  should  end  in  failure.  Frank  listened  to  them, 
saying  very  little,  but  enjoying  this  walk  with  Katherine's 
hand  on  his  arm.  He  tasted  the  sweetness  of  melan- 
choly, and  found  that  there  is  a  subtle  and  exquisite  plea- 
sure in  sharing  the  sadness  of  women  friends.  After 
all,  the  tragedy  was  one  of  anticipation.  It  might  never 
happen,  for  in  spite  of  passing  moods  of  pessimism  he 
had  an  instinctive  feeling  that  the  paper  would  not  die. 
But  the  crisis  was  like  a  melodrama  pleasantly  exciting 
and  thrilling,  and  if  Providence  were  kind  it  might  end 
with  wedding  bells,  like  all  good  melodramas. 

Big  Ben  boomed  out  eleven  o'clock,  and  Frank  sug- 
gested that  they  should  have  a  snack  and  some  hot  coffee 
before  going  back  to  the  office.  Margaret  Hubbard  ac- 
cepted the  idea  with  enthusiasm.  She  felt  sure  that 
Katherine  must  be  faint  with  hunger.  So  they  went  into 
a  small  restaurant  in  a  side  street  of  Charing  Cross,  and 
there  the  first  person  they  saw  was  Edmund  Grattan. 
He  greeted  them  with  joyful  surprise,  and  then  lowering 


364  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

his  voice  said,  "What  news,  my  children  ?  I  hear  gloomy 
things  of  a  certain  office." 

Margaret  told  him  that  they  were  waiting  for  the  great 
announcement,  and  Grattan  vowed  that  if  he  had  to  stay 
out  all  night  he  would  not  go  to  bed  before  hearing  the 
verdict.  It  had  been  a  real  shock  to  him  when  he  heard 
of  the  crisis,  and  the  thought  of  the  boys  who  would  be 
turned  out  into  the  street  if  things  went  wrong  made  his 
heart  like  lead.  He  need  hardly  say  that  everything  he 
had  in  the  world,  down  to  the  shirt  on  his  back,  would 
be  at  the  service  of  Margaret,  and  Katherine,  and  Frank, 
if  things  went  badly  with  them  for  a  time.  He  prayed 
God  they  would  not  be  too  proud  to  come  to  an  old 
friend  in  time  of  need. 

Margaret  said  she  would  certainly  call  for  his  shirt 
to  shield  her  from  the  cold  blast  rather  than  go  naked 
before  the  world. 

"Ah  now,  you  think  I'm  joking,"  said  Grattan.  "On 
my  soul  I  swear  that  all  I  have  is  yours,  though  it's  not 
much  that  I  can  call  my  own." 

He  seemed  hurt  at  the  laughter  with  which  his  offer 
had  been  received,  but  Margaret  Hubbard  said  very  gen- 
tly, "We  know  you'll  be  the  best  of  friends,  and  that  gives 
us  comfort/' 

These  words  restored  Grattan's  enthusiasm,  and  he 
seemed  almost  eager  for  the  paper  to  go  under  in  order 
that  he  might  have  some  chance  of  showing  his  gratitude 
for  all  the  hours  he  had  spent  in  Margaret  Hubbard's 
rooms.  Frank,  and  certainly  Katherine  and  Margaret 
who  had  quick,  observant  eyes,  noticed  that  the  little 
man  was  dressed  in  the  deepest  black  as  though  he  had 
just  come  from  a  funeral,  and  that  he  was  drinking  cold 
water  with  his  meal.  Frank,  who  had  never  seen  him 
drinking  anything  weaker  than  whisky,  was  astonished, 
and  he  could  not  help  remarking  that  he  took  his  water 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  365 

with  an  almost  ostentatious  air.  But  he  did  not  say  a 
word  on  the  subject  of  his  clothes  or  his  temperance, 
and  though  once  or  twice  he  seemed  to  fall  into  a  melan- 
choly mood,  and  gave  vent  to  deep  sighs,  he  quickly 
roused  himself  and  showed  the  warmest  sympathy  with 
the  troubles  of  his  friends.  He  walked  back  with  them 
to  the  office,  and  said  he  would  wait  outside  until  Frank 
could  oblige  him  by  letting  him  know  what  announcement 
had  been  made. 

It  was  a  quarter  to  twelve,  and  when  Frank  and  his 
companions  went  back  to  their  room  they  found  all  their 
colleagues  bending  over  a  paper  upon  which  Codrington 
was  writing  with  an  air  of  intense  solemnity. 

"Good  heavens !"  he  said,  lifting  his  pale  face  to  stare 
at  the  newcomers.  "Where  have  you  been  all  this  time  ? 
I  am  surprised  at  you  leaving  the  office  for  a  single  min- 
ute. There  is  no  knowing  what  might  have  happened." 

"Has  anything  happened?"  said  Luttrell. 

"No.  But  we  are  just  sending  a  Round  Robin  to  the 
proprietor,  demanding  an  announcement  to  the  editorial 
staff.  It  is  beneath  our  dignity  to  rely  upon  the  answer 
to  the  compositors.  Our  own  fate  is  at  stake." 

"Bother  dignity,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard,  "but  I  agree 
that  we  ought  to  have  a  special  statement." 

Every  one  put  his  signature  to  the  paper,  and  it  was 
taken  into  the  proprietor's  room  by  Codrington  himself. 
He  came  back  with  a  flushed  face  and  troubled  eyes. 

"The  proprietor  desires  us  to  wait  until  he  has  received 
the  deputation  of  men.  Bellamy  was  with  him,  and  from 
the  Chief's  gloomy  face.  I  am  convinced  that  we  must 
abandon  hope." 

"Well,  there  is  not  long  to  wait  anyhow,"  said  Mar- 
garet. "Hark!  the  men  are  going  down." 

All  the  reporters  moved  out  into  the  passage,  and  down 
the  stone  stairs  from  the  composing-room  came  four 


366  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

sturdy  men  with  their  shirt  sleeves  rolled  up  and  white 
aprons  tied  round  them.  They  held  their  heads  high, 
and  they  had  the  air  of  men  who  are  not  going  to  stand 
any  nonsense.  But  they  were  very  pale,  and  the  sight 
of  them  filing  into  the  proprietor's  room  made  Luttrell 
feel  curiously  sick  and  faint  for  a  moment.  It  made  him 
realise  with  a  sharp  sense  of  tragedy  that  upon  the  an- 
swer to  these  men  would  depend  the  happiness  of  many 
little  homes,  and  of  many  women  and  children. 

They  stayed  in  the  room  only  ten  minutes,  but  it 
seemed  like  an  hour.  Voices  could  be  heard  through  the 
closed  door,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the  men's  spokesman, 
the  Father  of  the  Chapel,  was  speaking  loudly  and  an- 
grily. 

"My  God!"  whispered  Codrington.  "The  paper  dies 
to-night." 

Then  the  door  opened  and  the  men  came  out  in  single 
file.  They  were  still  very  solemn,  and  walked  back  to 
the  stairs  with  a  kind  of  stern  dignity.  Brandon  took 
the  Father  of  the  Chajpel  by  the  arm. 

"What's  the  answer?"  he  said  hoarsely. 

"The  notices  are  withdrawn,"  said  the  man. 

"Withdrawn?"  said  Codrington.  He  went  very  white 
and  then  gave  a  queer  laugh  as  though  there  were  tears 
in  his  throat.  He  turned  to  the  group  of  men  and  women 
in  the  passage.  "The  notices  are  withdrawn !  God's  in 
His  heaven  and  all's  well  with  the  world !" 

"But  only  for  a  fortnight,"  said  the  compositor  to 
Brandon.  "We're  still  left  in  a  state  of  bloomin'  uncer- 
tainty. The  Boss  won't  give  us  any  definite  news.  It's 
simply  a  case  of  prolongin'  the  hagony." 

Silas  Bellamy  came  into  the  passage,  and  beckoned  to 
the  reporting  staff. 

"Come  on,  boys.    The  proprietor  will  speak  to  you." 

They  were  joined  by  the  leader-writers  and  the  liter- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  367 

ary-editor.  The  general  anxiety  had  abolished  all  dif- 
ferences of  rank  and  office.  Phillimore,  the  young  liter- 
ary editor,  with  a  dead-white  face  and  disordered  hair, 
was  next  to  Luttrell  and  said,  "This  strain  is  killing  me." 

"The  fortnightly  notices  have  been  cancelled,"  said 
Luttrell.  "It  seems  all  right." 

Phillimore  shook  his  head. 

"They  are  bound  to  do  that  unless  the  paper  died  to- 
night. But  Fm  told  all  the  negotiations  have  failed." 

The  fifteen  or  sixteen  men,  with  Margaret  Hubbard 
and  Katherine  Halstead,  went  into  the  proprietor's  room 
and  ranged  themselves  at  the  end  of  the  room.  Benjamin 
Harrison  was  sitting  at  his  desk  staring  at  his  red  blot- 
ting-pad. He  looked  haggard  and  ill  at  ease,  and  when 
he  raised  his  head  and  gave  a  quick,  searching  glance  at 
the  editorial  staff  assembled  before  him  his  eyes  looked 
very  tired  and  melancholy.  But  he  roused  himself  into 
an  attempt  at  cheerfulness  and  stood  up  with  a  smile 
flickering  about  his  lips,  grasping  his  coat  lapels. 

"I  have  to  thank  you  all  for  your  loyalty  to  me  and  the 
paper,"  he  said  in  a  low,  nervous  voice.  "The  way  in 
which  you  have  all  respected  the  pledge  of  secrecy  has 
been  remarkable  and — and — if  I  may  so — admirable.  It 
has  been  unnecessary  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  upon  the 
discretion  of  each  member  of  the  staff  depends  the  re- 
sult of  the  negotiations  now  in  progress.  If  you  had 
all  gone  out  seeking  new  places  advertisers  would  have 
withdrawn  their  orders,  the  public  would  have  known 
of  our  jeopardy,  and  the  present  value  of  the  paper,  such 
as  it  is,  would  have  been  destroyed.  It  was  only  because 
I  had  the  utmost  confidence  in  your  loyalty  that  I  was 
persuaded  not  to  close  it  down  a  fortnight  ago,  and  to 
give  an  extra  time  of  grace  to  those  who  may  possibly 
be  able  to  rescue  the  paper  from  its  peril.  I  regret  to 
say  that  so  far  all  our  negotiations  have  failed,  but  I 


368  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

am  assured  by  Mr.  Bellamy — and  I  have  every  confidence 
in  his  assurance — that  there  is  still  a  good  chance  of  re- 
construction. I  may  say,  and  I  hope  you  will  believe  me 
when  I  say  it,  that  I  have  been  untiring  in  my  own  efforts 
to  obtain  capital  elsewhere  in  order  to  take  over  the 
burden  which  has  been  too  heavy  for  me,  and  I  have 
reasonable  expectations  in  several  quarters.  In  a  few 
days,  perhaps  even  in  a  few  hours,  one  of  these  hopes 
will  be  fulfilled,  in  which  case  no  one  will  rejoice  more 
than  myself  that  this  paper  which  began  with  such  great 
promise  will  not  end  in  an  untimely  and  unfortunate  way. 
Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  thank  you  heartily  for  the  great 
patience  and  courage  which  you  are  showing  in  these  days 
of — of — apprehension." 

He  sat  down  and  took  up  a  copy  of  the  Westminster 
Gazette,  staring  at  the  leader  page  as  if  its  article  on 
Tariff  Reform  and  Tin  Plates  were  of  absorbing  interest 
to  him.  But  it  was  only  a  cover  to  his  intense  nervous- 
ness. 

Brandon  cleared  his  throat,  and  stepping  forward  a 
little  said — 

"Do  you  still  bind  us  over  to  secrecy  and  to  abstain 
from  seeking  new  places?  I  speak  not  only  for  myself 
but  on  behalf  of  my  colleagues.  It  will  be  awkward  for 
all  of  us  if  we  step  straight  into  the  street,  having  worked 
out  our  notices  to  the  bitter  end." 

A  man's  voice  trembling  with  suppressed  emotion  said 
in  a  low  tone,  "It  will  be  more  than  awkward.  It  will 
be  a  damnable  injustice." 

It  was  Phillimore's  voice.  He  was  standing  behind 
his  colleagues,  and  only  those  near  to  him  heard  his  pas- 
sionate remark. 

The  proprietor  seemed  rather  taken  aback  by  Bran- 
don's question. 

"Why,"  he  said,  looking  at  Bellamy,  as  though  for 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  369 

counsel,  "I  think  it  would  be  well  to  continue  the  policy 
of  secrecy.  That  I  am  sure  is  essential  to  the  success 
of  the  negotiations.  Is  it  not,  Mr.  Bellamy?" 

"Undoubtedly,"  said  Bellamy,  pulling  his  moustache. 
"But,  of  course,  we  have  no  right  to  prevent  any  one 
from  applying  for  a  new  position  if  he  thinks  fit.  It  is 
only  a  matter  of  policy.  There  can  be  no  binding 
pledge." 

"After  all,  gentlemen,"  said  Harrison,  looking  rather 
wistfully  over  to  the  group  of  journalists,  whose  hopes 
had  been  utterly  damped  by  the  proprietor's  vague  and 
unsatisfactory  words,  "after  all,  I  am  playing  your  game 
as  well  as  my  own.  We  are  all  in  the  same  boat,  are  we 
not?" 

The  words  seemed  to  be  spoken  in  self-defence,  and 
there  was  a  murmur  of  "Hear!  hear!"  from  one  or  two 
of  the  journalists  stirred  to  sympathy  by  this  handsome 
young  man,  whose  eyes  were  so  unutterly  mournful,  and 
who  looked  almost  afraid  of  the  men  in  front  of  him, 
as  though  they  were  his  enemies  rather  than  his  em- 
ployees. 

But  to  Luttrell's  surprise  Katherine  Halstead  answered 
the  proprietor  differently.  Twisting  her  hands  together 
nervously,  she  spoke  in  a  clear  and  thrilling  voice,  though 
there  was  timidity  in  some  of  its  tones. 

"I  do  not  think  we  are  quite  in  the  same  boat,"  she 
said.  "You  are  a  very  rich  man,  Mr.  Harrison,  and  most 
of  us  are  very  poor.  If  this  paper  goes  down  you  will  not 
have  to  give  up  one  of  your  motor-cars,  nor  deny  your- 
self even  a  cigar.  But  some  of  us  here  will  face  starva- 
tion, and  their  wives  and  children  will  perhaps  go  hun- 
gry. That  is  a  big  difference,  is  it  not?" 

These  words  created  something  like  a  sensation,  and 
the  quiet  "Hear!  hear!"  which  had  been  uttered  pre- 


370  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

viously,  was  now  repeated  more  loudly  and  almost  unani- 
mously. 

The  young  proprietor  flushed  deeply  and  rested  his 
hand  on  his  forehead  as  he  sat  at  his  desk. 

"What  would  you  have  me  do  ?"  he  said  in  a  helpless, 
embarrassed  way. 

Margaret  Hubbard  answered  for  Katherine. 

"There  is  some  truth  in  what  Miss  Halstead  has  said. 
If  what  we  still  hope  will  never  happen  does  happen, 
would  it  not  be  fair  to  regard  the  notices  as  dating  from 
the  first  of  next  month  instead  of  the  first  of  this  month? 
We  all  wish  to  be  loyal,  but  our  loyalty  will  be  your 
gain  and  our  grievous  loss  if  the  worst  takes  place." 

"What  shall  I  gain  ?"  said  the  young  millionaire. 

"The  month's  wages  of  the  staff/'  said  Brandon.  "You 
admit,  sir,  that,  but  for  our  keeping  the  secret,  the  paper 
would  have  closed  down  on  the  night  after  the  issue 
of  the  notices.  In  that  case  we  should  at  least  have  gone 
out  with  four  weeks'  salary." 

"Then  you  would  have  preferred  me  to  end  things  on 
that  night?"  said  the  proprietor.  He  glanced  across  at 
Bellamy,  who  was  listening  to  this  conversation  with  a 
worried  look. 

Codrington  stepped  in  front  of  Brandon. 

"I  am  sure  none  of  us  wish  anything  so  terrible,"  he 
said  in  a  voice  of  solemn  cadence.  "We  hope,  indeed  we 
believe,  that  this  great  paper  has  before  it  a  brilliant  and 
prosperous  future.  I  for  one,  Mr.  Harrison — and  I  feel 
sure  I  speak  on  behalf  of  the  majority  here — cannot  con- 
ceive any  greater  calamity  than  the  downfall  of  this 
paper,  which  is  so  impossible  and  incredible,  that  the 
imagination  refuses  to  entertain  the  idea.  There  is  only 
one  watchword  among  us.  We  will  be  loyal  to  the 
death." 

These  words,  uttered  in  Codrington's  finest  eighteenth- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          371 

century  style,  startled  Benjamin  Harrison,  who  was  un- 
used to  his  gifts  of  oratory.  He  was  struck  dumb  and 
seemed  quite  bewildered.  Bellamy  in  spite  of  the  gravity 
of  the  situation  smiled  and  winked  at  Luttrell  in  a  comi- 
cal way.  Some  of  the  men  murmured  angrily,  others 
looked  over  at  Codrington  quizzingly  as  much  as  to  say 
that  after  that  speech  nothing  further  was  to  be  said. 
This  was  the  view  taken  by  the  proprietor. 

He  rose  and  grasped  his  coat  lapels  again,  and  said, 
"Perhaps  we  had  better  dissolve  this  meeting.  I  am 
sorry  that  I  had  nothing  more  satisfactory  to  tell  you. 
In  a  few  days  perhaps " 

He  turned  to  Bellamy  and  spoke  to  him  in  a  low  voice, 
while  the  staff  silently  left  the  room. 

"Oh,  you  blithering  idiot !"  said  Brandon  to  Codrington. 
"You  can't  restrain  your  torn-fool  emotion,  can  you." 

"Thank  God,"  said  Codrington,  "I  was  not  born  with 
the  instinct  of  disloyalty." 

The  two  men  argued  with  each  other,  but  Luttrell  did 
not  wait  to  hear  them.  He  ran  down  the  stairs  to  find 
Edmund  Grattan,  who  was  waiting  for  the  news  outside. 

He  saw  his  figure  in  a  slouch  hat  and  long  cloak  pacing 
up  and  down  on  the  dark  side  of  the  street.  Luttrell 
called  to  him,  and  Grattan  came  across  into  the  greenish 
light  of  the  lamps  hanging  outside  the  newspaper  office. 

"Tell  me,"  said  Grattan,  "what  news,  my  dear  boy?" 

In  a  few  words  Luttrell  told  him  confidentially  the 
vague,  unsatisfactory  statement  which  had  just  been  made 
to  the  staff,  and  Grattan  whistled  in  a  dismal  way. 

"It  looks  bad,"  he  said.  "I'm  afraid  these  lights  will  go 
out  in  two  weeks'  time.  I'm  sorry.  I  can't  say  how  sorry 
I  am.  The  poor  boys !  The  poor  girls !  What  will  be- 
come of  them  all?" 

He  gripped  Frank's  arm,  and  said,  "Courage,  friend. 
Be  of  good  heart !  It's  pluck  that  pulls  a  man  through." 


372  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Katherine  and  Margaret  came  down  the  steps,  and 
the  men  joined  them. 

"Come  and  have  some  dinner  in  Soho,"  said  Grattan. 
"We  will  have  a  pleasant  meal  and  some  champagne." 
He  corrected  himself  hastily  and  said,  "At  least,  you  will. 
I'm  not  drinking  anything  now." 

"A  cab  is  what  I  want,  and  then  home  to  bed,"  said 
Margaret.  "This  poor  child  is  dog-tired." 

Grattan  pressed  them  to  join  him  at  a  cosy  meal,  but 
Margaret  said  the  greatest  kindness  he  could  do  them 
would  be  to  call  a  cab.  That  was  an  easy  task,  for  a 
hansom  came  tinkling  by  and  the  two  girls  got  inside. 

"How  are  you  feeling  ?"  said  Frank  anxiously  to  Kath- 
erine, as  he  mounted  the  step  and  shut  the  doors  upon 
them. 

She  gave  him  her  hand  and  did  not  answer,  and  Frank 
could  see  that  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes. 

He  raised  her  hand  to  his  lips  and  then  jumped  down 
as  the  cab  made  a  move. 

"This  is  a  tragic  business,"  he  said  to  Grattan. 

"My  boy,"  said  the  Irishman.  "It  is  sheer  brutality. 
How  that  young  whipper-snapper  with  three  and  a  half 
millions  can  abandon  this  great  paper  to  its  fate,  regard- 
less of  ruined  lives  and  bleeding  hearts,  is  a  mystery  I 
can't  understand.  If  we  were  in  Russia  his  life  would 
not  be  worth  a  kopek."  He  pulled  Frank  by  the  arm  and 
dragged  him  into  the  darkness  beyond  the  lamps. 

"There  he  is !    May  he  know  no  sleep  to-night." 

The  thousand-guinea  automobile,  which  was  the  won- 
der of  all  the  newsvendors  waiting  for  the  first  edition, 
came  slowly  from  behind  a  row  of  carts  and  stopped  be- 
fore the  office  steps.  Benjamin  Harrison,  a  tall  figure 
in  a  long  fur-lined  coat  and  silk  hat,  came  through  the 
swing  doors  and  hurried  into  the  car.  For  a  moment 
the  green  lights  illumined  his  face,  and  it  was  very  white 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  373 

and  haggard.  As  soon  as  the  door  was  closed  the  driver 
sounded  his  horn,  the  car  panted  and  then  glided  swiftly 
forward  through  the  lines  of  newspaper  carts. 

"There  goes  the  white-livered  cur !"  said  Grattan.  "Bad 
luck  attend  him." 

"There  goes  a  very  unhappy  man,"  said  Luttrell.  "I 
pity  him  from  my  heart.  I  am  sure  he  means  well." 

"My  son,"  said  Grattan,  "Hell  is  paved  with  the  souls 
of  those  who  meant  well." 

Then  he  pressed  Frank's  arm  and  said,  "All  the  same 
I  am  sorry  for  my  hard  words.  You  teach  me  a  lesson 
in  charity,  my  lad.  Perhaps  that  poor  young  man  is  suf- 
fering for  other  people's  sins.  I  know  he  has  had  a  pack 
of  scoundrels  round  him.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not  for  me  to 
judge.  God  forbid!" 

As  they  walked  together  into  Holborn  he  stopped  under 
a  lamp-post  and  said,  "Do  you  see  these  black  duds  of 
mine,  Luttrell?" 

"Yes,"  said  Frank.    "I'm  sorry  if " 

"They're  for  my  wife, — rest  her  soul,"  said  Grattan 
very  solemnly.  "She  died  a  week  ago,  and  I  could  not 
hold  her  dear  hand,  or  close  her  eyes  in  the  last  sleep." 

His  voice  broke  and  he  walked  on  silently.  Then,  in 
a  little  while,  he  said,  "Frank,  I  drove  her  away  because 
of  my  wildness,  and  wandering  life,  and  Bohemian  ways. 
She  left  me  one  night  when  I  was  drunk,  and  she  went, 
poor  girl,  to  another  man  who  didn't  drink,  and  who  was 
once  my  best  friend.  She  sent  me  a  letter  the  night  be- 
fore she  died  imploring  my  forgiveness  and  begging  me  to 
give  up  the  drink  which  she  knew  was  still  the  curse  of 
my  life.  ...  I  had  nothing  to  forgive.  The  sin  was 
mine  because  I  drove  her  to  it.  ...  And  I  have  taken 
the  pledge,  which  God  help  me  to  keep." 

Frank  tried  to  express  his  sympathy,  but  the  Irishman 
interrupted  him,  and  spoke  of  Margaret  and  Katherine  as 


374  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

though  their  troubles  were  of  more  importance  than  his 
own. 

"Frank,"  he  said  suddenly,  "is  it  the  truth  I  hear  from 
Codrington  that  you  have  lost  your  heart  to  little  Kitty. 
.  .  .  Yes  ?  well,  sure,  now,  that  gives  me  joy !" 

He  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  street  and  wrung 
Frank  by  the  hand. 

"That  will  give  you  courage,"  he  said.  "Why,  man, 
you  will  be  able  to  face  the  whole  world  on  the  strength 
of  that!  To  work  for  one's  woman!  To  carve  a  way 
through  for  her !  To  leap  over  any  mound  and  ditch  of 
difficulty  that  keeps  you  two  apart!  Why,  that  is  what 
puts  pluck  into  the  heart  of  a  man  and  makes  a  hero  of 
him!" 

These  words  and  others  which  came  glowing  from  the 
heart  of  the  little  Irishman  put  wine  into  Frank  Luttrell 
and  made  him  feel  a  stronger  and  braver  man.  He  went 
home  in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning  strangely  ex- 
hilarated, in  spite  of  the  gloomy  result  of  the  long-awaited 
announcement.  In  his  new  zeal  to  carve,  as  Grattan 
said,  a  way  for  Katherine,  he  turned  to  the  manuscript 
story  which  had  lain  unfinished  on  his  desk  for  many 
days  now,  and  before  he  went  to  bed  as  the  light  of  day 
was  creeping  through  his  window  blinds  added  a  chapter 
to  it.  The  book  had  not  been  begun  with  the  idea  of 
publication,  but  now  he  thought  that  perhaps  he  might 
get  a  few  pounds  for  it,  which  would  help  to  tide  over 
the  barren  days  ahead  if  he  should  find  himself  again 
"out  of  a  job."  He  determined  to  "keep  his  end  up" 
whatever  happened,  and  perhaps  he  might  succeed  as  a 
novelist,  if  he  failed  as  a  journalist.  A  man  of  moods  he 
plunged  into  pessimism  and  rose  to  the  heights  of  opti- 
mism too  easily  and  quickly,  but  perhaps  it  was  good  for 
him  in  these  hours  of  crisis  that  he  should  find  a  new 
hope  with  which  to  buoy  himself  up. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  next  fortnight  was  even  a  greater  strain  than  the 
two  weeks  which  had  just  gone  by.  Vicary  passed  the 
word  round  that  the  paper  was  to  be  better  and  bigger 
than  before.  For  the  sake  of  those  mysterious  negotia- 
tions, which  seemed  to  drag  on  interminably,  it  was  neces- 
sary, he  said,  to  bluff  the  world  and  Fleet  Street,  and  to 
turn  out  the  best  article  on  the  market.  In  his  own  strong 
and  forceful  language  he  said  that  "each  man  must  do 
his  damndest,"  and  he  put  on  the  screw  with  relentless 
severity.  Yet,  to  the  honour  of  the  staff,  it  is  to  be  re- 
corded that  each  man,  and  each  woman,  too,  responded 
gallantly  to  the  call.  They  worked  ardently  in  their  spe- 
cial sphere,  and  with  two  extra  pages  in  the  paper  each 
day,  they  turned  out  some  admirable  and  brilliant  work. 
Brandon,  who  was  the  only  one  of  the  men  to  resent  the 
attitude  of  the  proprietor  as  to  the  notices,  said  with 
regard  to  all  this  effort  and  enthusiasm,  "Cest  magnifique 
mais  ce  n'est  .pas  la  guerre,"  but  even  he  worked  like  a 
Trojan,  and  his  articles  on  the  Making  of  Criminals  were 
masterly  and  convincing,  and  have  not  yet  been  forgot- 
ten. 

Luttrell  himself  was  doing  ordinary  reporters'  work — 
special  inquiries  and  descriptive  reports  of  small  hap- 
penings, and  for  a  man  of  his  calibre  the  rush  and  bustle 
of  these  days  were  wearing  enough.  But  in  the  evenings 
when  he  had  finished  his  copy,  after  feverish  hours  and 
the  final  effort  of  putting  the  result  of  his  sight-seeing  on 
the  paper  with  a  desperate  endeavour  to  be  bright  and 
original,  the  inevitable  reaction  set  in,  and  he  felt  that 

375 


376  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

the  death  of  the  paper  would  be  a  relief  to  the  haunting 
anxiety  as  to  its  fate. 

Fifteen,  sixteen,  seventeen,  eighteen,  nineteen  days  had 
passed,  and  still  there  was  no  word  to  say  that  the 
negotiations  for  reconstruction  had  been  successful.  Bel- 
lamy went  away  on  a  mysterious  journey  to  the  north 
ot  England,  and  came  back  again  to  shut  himself  up  in 
his  room,  avoiding  his  favourites,  and  taking  his  meals 
indoors,  when  he  could  get  half-an-hour's  release  from 
interviews  with  the  proprietor,  business  manager  and 
strange  visitors  who  still  continued  to  call.  Now  and 
again  Codrington  or  Quin  would  get  inside  his  room  for 
a  few  minutes  and  come  out  again  smiling  with  a  funny 
story  just  narrated  by  the  Chief,  or  with  a  message  of 
hope  to  the  staff.  "Things  are  going  on  famously/'  "The 
negotiations  are  all  but  completed/1  "There  are  a  mil- 
lion chances  to  one  that  we  shall  pull  through." 

But  on  the  twenty-second  day  there  was  a  decided 
drop  in  the  spiritual  barometer  of  the  office.  Bellamy 
had  told  Quin,  and  Quin  whispered  it  to  his  colleagues 
that  "things  were  looking  very  black  and  only  a  miracle 
could  save  them." 

These  words  gave  the  men  cold  shivers,  and  they  re- 
garded their  doom  as  settled.  But  in  the  midst  of  their 
despair  they  were  excited  to  hilarity  by  the  report  that 
upon  Christopher  Codrington,  of  all  people  in  the  world, 
the  safety  of  the  paper  now  depended.  For  two  days 
Codrington  had  been  terribly  mysterious,  and  he  had  been 
closeted  with  Bellamy  for  over  two  hours  at  a  time  on 
each  of  those  days.  On  the  third  day  he  came  to  the 
office  more  immaculately  dressed  than  ever,  with  a  brand- 
new  Gladstone-bag  on  the  hansom  in  which  he  had  rattled 
up  to  the  door,  and  with  a  pocketful  of  gold  out  of  which 
he  stood  drinks  to  Brandon  and  Luttrell. 

At  the  bar  of  the  wine  tavern  round  the  corner  he 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          377 

revealed,  under  a  pledge  of  strict  confidence  to  his  two 
colleagues,  that  he  had  been  provided  with  money,  and 
the  full  financial  figures  of  the  paper,  by  Bellamy,  and 
that  he  was  about  to  start  on  a  journey  to  the  west  of 
England  to  raise  capital  from  a  group  of  enormously 
wealthy  men  in  the  shipping  line  of  business,  who  were 
keen  Liberals  and  particular  friends  of  himself.  He  had 
already  prepared  the  way  for  his  visit  by  long  despatches 
which  they  had  answered  favourably,  and  he  felt  con- 
vinced that  he  would  bring  back  a  written  guarantee  for 
the  sum  required  by  Benjamin  Harrison  as  earnest  money 
for  the  sale  of  the  paper. 

"Luttrell  and  Brandon,  my  dear  fellows,"  said  Cod- 
rington  solemnly,  ''this  is  a  great  hour  in  my  career.  If 
I  can  save  the  paper  I  shall  consider — I  hope  legitimately 
— that  all  my  private  trespasses  may  be  forgiven  in  re- 
turn for  this  service  to  humanity,  which,  by  God's  grace, 
I  am  about  to  perform." 

He  shook  hands  solemnly  with  Luttrell  and  Brandon, 
as  though  about  to  depart  on  a  perilous  journey  which 
might  cost  him  his  life. 

"I  will  send  you  a  private  telegram,"  he  said  to  Lut- 
trell, and  then  raising  his  hat  to  the  lady  behind  the  bar, 
entered  the  cab  which,  regardless  of  expense,  he  had  kept 
waiting  outside. 

Brandon  and  Luttrell  watched  his  cab  steering  a  course 
through  the  traffic  until  it  was  lost  to  sight.  Then  Bran- 
don turned  and  leant  against  a  lamp-post  and  laughed 
until  the  tears  came  into  his  eyes,  to  the  surprise  and 
amazement  of  the  passers-by. 

"To  think  that  Codrington  is  our  ambassador-extraor- 
dinary in  search  of  gold !"  he  said  when  he  recovered  his 
gravity.  "It  will  be  ironical  if  he  really  raises  the  wind." 

It  was  on  the  way  back  to  the  office  that  Frank  heard 
the  first  news  of  Peg  since  the  evening  at  his  rooms  in 


378          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

Staple  Inn,  over  a  fortnight  ago.  He  had  not  put  a  ques- 
tion to  Brandon,  and  Margaret  Hubbard  had  not  given 
him  any  details  as  to  the  private  interview  that  had  taken 
place  at  the  office.  But  now  Brandon  said  quietly,  "You 
will  be  interested  to  hear,  Luttrell,  that  Peg  has  got  a 
place  and  is  no  longer  living  with  me.  Thanks  to  Mother 
Hubbard  she  is  as  happy  as  a  humming-bird,  and  is  build- 
ing up  a  new  life  for  herself." 

He  explained  that  Margaret  had  gone  several  times  to 
see  the  girl,  and  that  Peg  had  fallen  in  love  with  her  and 
would  do  anything  in  the  world  for  her.  Then  Mar- 
garet had  found  her  a  situation  in  a  farm-house  in  Sur- 
rey, which  was  an  experiment,  and  a  successful  one,  in 
practical  philanthropy,  by  a  woman  friend  of  Margaret's. 
This  lady  befriended  girls  of  the  lower  middle-class — 
mostly  shop-girls  and  waitresses  in  city  tea-shops — who 
had  suffered  from  ill-health  owing  to  long  hours  in  a 
vitiated  atmosphere,  or  had  been  the  victims  of  those  little 
tragedies  which  so  often  imperil  the  souls  of  girls  in  great 
cities.  Under  the  cheerful,  sane,  practical  and  spiritual 
rule  of  this  maiden  lady  the  girls  learnt  dairy  and  poultry 
work,  bee-keeping,  and  horticulture.  Although  designed 
at  first  as  a  charitable  institution  it  had  become  a  self- 
supporting  business,  and  the  girls  were  paid  fair  wages. 
They  were  a  happy  family  of  twenty,  and  a  healthy  life  of 
fresh  air  and  exercise  in  the  most  beautiful  part  of  Sur- 
rey, soon  restored  the  mental  and  moral  balance  of  young 
women  who  had  for  a  time  suffered  from  hysteria,  and 
melancholia,  or  anaemia.  But  they  gained  other  good 
things.  Mary  Warrington  was  a  woman  of  dominating 
character  and  of  a  sweet  and  refined  temperament.  The 
Women's  Home  Farm,  as  the  place  was  called,  was  in 
its  way  a  rural  college,  or  perhaps  more  like  a  convent 
without  strict  religious  rules,  but  under  the  pervading 
influence  of  a  pure  religious  character.  Although  Miss 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          379 

Warrington  knew  literally  how  to  take  her  eggs  to  mar- 
ket— and  always  obtained  the  full  market  price — she  was, 
according  to  Margaret  Hubbard,  a  medieval  saint  in  mod- 
ern life.  The  tenderness  of  her  heart,  which  drew  forth 
all  that  was  best  and  beautiful  in  the  girls  who  came  into 
her  Home  Farm,  was  only  equalled  by  the  mental  breadth 
which  enabled  her  to  teach  as  well  as  to  organise  and  to 
give  intellectual  culture  as  well  as  moral  and  physical 
health  to  those  under  her  kind  authority.  At  night  she 
read  books  to  the  girls  gathered  in  the  great  kitchen  of  the 
farm-house,  which  was  three  centuries  old,  and  induced 
them  to  read  out  aloud  in  turns.  Then  she  would  talk 
to  them  of  the  great  ideals  and  thoughts  which  she  had 
gathered  from  many  of  the  masters,  and  without  any 
dogmatism  or  the  pedantry  of  the  ordinary  school-mis- 
tress, gave  these  girls,  gradually  and  in  a  simple,  unaf- 
fected way,  a  broader  outlook  on  life  and  a  womanly  edu- 
cation. She  was  of  the  old  Catholic  faith  herself,  but 
she  never  attempted  to  proselytise,  and  her  girls  were  of 
all  denominations  and  of  no  religious  creed.  But  she  had 
a  kind  of  spiritual  radiance  which  illumined  the  farm- 
house and  its  garden  with  the  light  of  a  pure  and  sweet 
soul,  and  those  twenty  young  women,  who  had  become 
dairymaids  and  bee-keepers  and  gardeners,  had  a  devo- 
tion to  her  which  was  near  idolatry.  All  this  Margaret 
Hubbard  had  told  to  Brandon,  and  he  had  smiled  at  her 
enthusiasm,  not  believing  that  it  could  all  be  justified. 
But  he  had  taken  Peg  down  to  the  Home  Farm  and  had 
met  Mary  Warrington  and  had  seen  the  girls  at  work, 
and  when  he  came  back,  leaving  Peg  miserable  and  in 
tears,  he  believed  that  in  a  little  while  she  too  would  be 
singing  as  he  had  heard  the  dairymaids.  It  was  too  soon 
yet  to  know  how  the  experiment  would  work  out  as  re- 
gards Peg,  whose  nature  was  so  peculiar  and  abnormal, 
but  two  days  ago  he  had  had  a  bright  ill-written  letter 


380          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

from  her,  and  a  note  from  Mary  Warrington  to  say  that 
already  the  girl  was  beginning  to  cheer  up  and  was  on  the 
friendliest  terms  with  her  companions. 

"It  is  an  enormous  relief  to  me,"  said  Brandon;  "and 
my  debt  of  gratitude  to  Margaret  Hubbard  will  never  be 
repaid." 

"I  am  glad,"  said  Frank.    "It  is  the  best  of  news." 

"I  will  not  thank  you,  Luttrell,  for  all  you  have  done 
in  this  affair.  Words  are  foolish  things.  But  if  ever  I 
can  do  anything  in  the  world " 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  Frank,  "I  have  done  nothing." 

"You  have  done  everything,"  said  Brandon.  He  did 
not  say  any  more,  but  he  was  more  deeply  moved  than 
Frank  had  ever  seen  this  strange,  reserved  man,  who 
underneath  his  rather  sullen  nature  had  a  strain  of  ten- 
derness which  was  very  rarely  revealed. 

This  incident  was  only  a  passing  interruption  of  the 
drama  which  obsessed  the  mind  of  every  man  on  the 
staff  of  The  Liberal,  but  the  thought  that  Brandon's 
strange,  unhappy  girl  should  have  found  a  home  in  which 
she  had  a  chance  of  building  up  a  new  character  and  life 
was  a  source  of  real  joy  to  Frank,  who  out  of  pity  and 
kindness  had  done  his  best  by  giving  a  helping  hand  to 
her  in  the  days  of  her  great  distress. 

At  the  office  the  sands  were  running  down,  and  only  a 
few  days  remained  before  the  fate  of  five  hundred  men 
would  be  decided.  Among  the  few  people  who  knew  of 
Codrington's  embassy  there  was  no  hope  left,  and  they 
could  only  give  way  to  an  hysterical  kind  of  hilarity. 
They  felt  that  if  this  was  the  last  resource  of  the  myste- 
rious "negotiations"  the  flag  might  be  hauled  down.  But 
curiously,  by  some  freak  of  psychology,  the  great  majority 
of  the  staff  had  swung  round  to  the  belief  that  all  would 
go  well.  When  they  approached  near  to  the  fatal  day 
it  was  impossible  to  think  of  the  debacle.  With  machin- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          381 

ery  throbbing  down  below,  with  all  the  busy  hum  of  life 
upstairs,  with  telegrams  pouring  in  from  different  parts 
of  the  world  with  the  news  of  the  world,  with  every  man 
doing  his  appointed  task  as  he  had  done  it  day  after  day 
and  week  after  week  for  years,  it  was  as  difficult  to  think 
that  in  a  short  time  all  that  thrilling  life  would  be  silenced 
in  the  death  of  the  great  paper,  as  it  is  always  difficult  to 
imagine  that  a  strong  man  full  of  energy  and  spirit  may 
drop  down  dead,  suddenly  and  swiftly. 

There  was  a  kind  of  superstition  which  took  the  place 
of  hope.  Phillimore,  the  literary  editor,  spoke  to  Lut- 
trell  in  the  passage  and  said,  "I  am  sure  we  are  going  to 
pull  through.  At  the  eleventh  hour  some  rich  man  will 
come  rolling  up  in  his  motor-car,  bringing  the  money  up 
with  him.  The  paper  cannot  die.  Why  worry?" 

He,  of  course,  was  worrying  himself  into  fiddle-strings, 
but  fantastic  as  his  idea  was  it  really  represented  the  gen- 
eral feeling  of  the  staff.  'The  paper  cannot  die.  Noth- 
ing could  kill  a  thing  with  such  vitality.  Bellamy  will 
turn  up  trumps  an  hour  before  the  fatal  time.  You  bet 
he  has  a  card  up  his  sleeve." 

Such  words  were  spoken  by  men  who  at  the  beginning 
of  the  month  had  been  almost  broken  up  by  the  dread 
of  ruin.  And  some  of  them  had  been  sadly  broken  up. 
One  of  the  reporters,  who  had  recently  left  another  paper 
to  come  on  to  the  staff,  believing  that  he  was  settled  in 
life,  was  drinking  hard,  in  order  to  get  Dutch  courage, 
and  was  a  pitiable-looking  wreck.  Another,  who  had  gone 
through  nearly  all  the  London  newspapers,  and  knew  that 
this  was  his  last  chance  on  earth,  was  in  a  state  of  maudlin 
misery. 

Luttrell  himself  was  so  nervous  and  highly-strung  that 
the  banging  of  a  door  or  the  sudden  sneeze  of  a  col- 
league gave  him  heart  palpitation.  But  he  tried  to  get  a 
grip  over  his  will,  and  at  least  he  had  sufficient  reserve  of 


382  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

strength  to  show  a  quiet  front  to  all  rumours  of  ruin  and 
to  all  counsels  of  despair.  On  the  morning  following 
Codrington's  departure  he  received  a  telegram  from  that 
romantic  ambassador.  It  was  a  message  of  good  cheer. 
"Have  every  prospect  of  success"  He  showed  the  tele- 
gram in  confidence  to  Brandon,  Margaret  Hubbard  and 
Katherine,  and  on  the  strength  of  it  they  went  to  supper 
at  the  Savoy  and  drank  a  bottle  of  champagne  to  Cod- 
rington  and  the  god  of  luck.  Even  Brandon's  natural 
hostility  to  Codrington  was  dispelled  by  the  great  and 
bounding  hope  that  he  would  be  the  deus  ex  machine 
by  hooking  a  millionaire.  Their  mysterious  cheerfulness 
in  the  reporters'  room  could  not  pass  unnoticed,  and  a 
cheerful  face  was  so  unusual  that  four  of  them  at*  one 
time  seemed  a  proof  to  all  their  immediate  colleagues 
that  things  were  shaping  well. 

But  on  the  following  day  Luttrell  was  sent  for  by  Bel- 
lamy. 

"Shut  the  door,  Luttrell/'  he  said,  and  then,  "you 
know  that  Codrington  went  away  to  seek  gold  in  the 
west?" 

"Yes,"  said  Luttrell,  and  his  pulse  beat  quickly  when 
he  added  eagerly,  "has  he  had  luck?" 

Bellamy  smiled. 

"Codrington  is  very  persuasive.  He  has  got  on  to  the 
right  side  of  a  chocolate  manufacturer." 

"Well  done '"said  Luttrell.  "That's  magnificent."  He 
gave  a  deep  sigh  expressive  of  infinite  relief.  "Then  we 
are  all  right,  sir? — out  of  the  wood?" 

"Go  slow,"  said  Bellamy.  "I  did  not  say  as  much  as 
that.  But  Codrington  has  drawn  blood.  His  potentate 
is  prepared  to  put  down  a  tenth  part  of  the  amount  which 
Benjamin  Harrison  demands,  in  return  for  the  ines- 
timable privilege  of  acquiring  this  paper  with  its  monthly 
expenses." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  383 

"A  tenth  part  ?"  said  Frank.  "I  suppose  it's  impos- 
sible to  get  at  the  rest  in  the  time?" 

Bellamy  laughed.  "On  the  Conservative  side  the  diffi- 
culty would  not  exist  for  a  moment.  But  it  is  as  difficult 
to  get  a  true  Liberal  to  part  with  money  as  to  draw  blood 
out  of  that  ink-pot." 

"Have  all  the  other  negotiations  failed?"  asked  Lut- 
trell.  As  Bellamy  had  gone  so  far  in  his  confidence  he 
felt  entitled  to  ask  the  question. 

"Not  altogether,"  said  Bellamy.  He  was  thoughtful 
for  a  moment.  Then  he  said  in  a  weary  way,  "You  don't 
know  all  I  have  done  in  the  endeavour  to  save  this  paper, 
Luttrell.  Nobody  will  ever  know  that.  And  I  can  hon- 
estly say  it  is  not  for  myself.  I  am  prepared  to  vacate 
this  chair  to-morrow — now — if  that  would  help  matters 
forward.  I  am  thinking  of  the  men  and  their  wives  and 
children.  I  know  what  it  will  mean  to  them  if  we  go 
tinder.  Benjamin  Harrison  does  not  understand  that.  I 
cannot  make  him  understand.  For  a  young  man  with 
many  good  qualities  he  seems  extraordinarily  callous.  But 
it  is  simply  sheer  ignorance  of  Fleet  Street  and  the  con- 
ditions of  life  here.  He  thinks  it  will  be  perfectly  easy 
for  every  man  of  them  to  find  a  new  place.  He  thinks 
he  has  done  nobly  in  keeping  them  so  long.  He  forgets 
— does  not  realise — his  terrific  responsibility  in  having 
drawn  them  out  of  good  positions  on  to  this  paper  of 
his.  He  does  not  remember  that  they  have  spent  their 
brains  and  bodies  in  his  service.  I  assure  you  that  night 
after  night  he  has  come  in  with  intent  to  kill.  He  wanted 
to  close  up  there  and  then.  And  I  have  had  to  struggle 
with  him  every  night.  Even  now  it  is  only  a  question 
of  time.  Given  three  months  I  would  still  save  the  situa- 
tion. But  Harrison  won't  give  us  another  day,  not  an- 
other hour,  after  the  end  of  this  month.  And  there  are 
only  two  days  more.  The  irony  of  it  is  that  he  is  one  of 


384          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

the  richest  men  in  England.  How  can  we  go  touting 
round  for  capital  when  he  is  wallowing  in  wealth  ?  That 
is  the  question  asked  by  every  one  I  have  gone  to.  And 
I'm  hanged  if  I  know  any  answer  to  it." 

Bellamy  picked  up  his  bayonet  and  handled  it  in  a 
yearning  way,  as  though  it  would  be  a  joy  to  him  to 
thrust  it  between  somebody's  ribs. 

"Then  we  must  abandon  hope  ?"  said  Luttrell  in  a  mel- 
ancholy voice. 

"Good  God  no,"  said  Bellamy,  looking  up  sharply. 
"Who  said  so  ?  Dum  spiro  spero.  Isn't  »that  good  Latin  ? 
You  ought  to  know  as  an  Oxford  gent.  .  .  .  Look  here, 
Luttrell,  talking  about  Oxford,  do  you  know  any  rich 
young  fool  who  wants  to  buy  a  peerage  and  a  paper? 
They're  both  going  cheap." 

"No,"  said  Luttrell,  "I'm  sorry  I  don't." 

"Take  your  time  and  think  it  out,"  said  Bellamy.  "Sit 
down,  won't  you?  I'll  use  the  opportunity  for  washing* 
my  hands.  Filthy  place  this  office." 

Luttrell  sat  down,  and  Bellamy  went  to  the  wash- 
basin. It  was  a  repetition  of  that  scene  when  Luttrell 
had  first  met  Bellamy,  and  sat  in  his  room. 

The  little  Chief  washed  his  hands,  and  polished  his 
nails,  and  brushed  his  hair  before  the  looking-glass  and 
whistled  a  little  tune.  It  was  the  same  tune  which  he 
had  whistled  on  that  day,  months  ago,  when  Frank  had 
sat  with  a  beating  heart  waiting  for  the  words  which 
would  decide  his  fate.  The  memory  of  the  tune  came 
back  to  him,  and  with  it  the  emotions  of  that  evening. 
Much  water  had  flowed  under  the  bridges  since  then, 
but  Frank's  heart  was  filled  with  a  strange  emotion  at  the 
thought  of  this  end  to  all  his  hopes.  He  never  thought 
he  would  sit  in  this  room  discussing  the  approaching 
death  of  the  great  paper. 

"Well?"  said  Bellamy. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  385 

"There  is  only  one  man  I  can  think  of.  He  was  an 
idealist  and  an  ardent  Liberal  when  we  were  in  the  same 
college  together.  But  he  doesn't  want  a  peerage.  He  is 
the  Earl  of  Bramshaw." 

"Bramshaw !"  said  Bellamy.  "My  hat,  man,  you  don't 
mean  to  say  you  know  Bramshaw?" 

"Yes,"  said  Luttrell.    "Why  not?" 

"And  you  have  been  keeping  him  up  your  sleeve  all 
this  time?" 

"I  haven't  given  him  a  thought." 

"Why,  my  innocent  babe,"  said  Bellamy.  "He  is  one 
of  the  wealthiest  peers  in  England.  He  has  got  the 
biggest  collieries  up  North." 

"So  I  believe,"  said  Luttrell. 

Bellamy  banged  his  fist  on  a  gong  and  a  boy  bounced 
in. 

"Bring  a  Bradshaw,  and  be  quick  about  it." 

He  opened  a  drawer  and  emptied  a  cash-box  full  of 
gold  on  to  the  desk. 

"How  much  do  you  want?" 

"What  for?"  said  Luttrell. 

"To  get  up  to  Bramshaw  and  do  credit  to  your  friend. 
Do  you  want  a  new  hat? — clothes?  Anyhow  you  will 
want  a  first-class  fare,  and  something  in  your  pocket  in 
case  of  accidents." 

He  handed  over  ten  pounds. 

The  boy  came  in  with  the  Bradshaw,  and  Bellamy 
turned  up  a  train, 

"You  had  better  go  by  the  twelve  o'clock.  It  gets  to 
Bramshaw  at  five." 

"I  can't  go  without  facts  and  figures,"  said  Luttrell, 
rather  overwhelmed  by  this  sudden  mission.  He  was 
wondering  whether  Bramshaw,  who  used  to  be  the  Hon- 
ourable John  Poyning,  would  be  the  same  bright,  boyish, 


386          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

enthusiastic  fellow  with  whom  he  had  gone  forth  on  the 
night  of  the  bonfire  "rag." 

Bellamy  told  him  to  sit  still  for  half-an-hour  while  he 
coached  him  in  newspaper  arithmetic,  and  during  that 
half -hour  Frank  learnt  more  about  the  financial  side  of 
a  newspaper  than  he  had  expected  to  know.  It  was  a 
revelation  to  him,  and  he  gasped  at  the  vast  and  almost 
incredible  expense  of  carrying  on  a  great  London  journal. 
He  could  not  help  sympathising  with  Benjamin  Harrison 
in  his  desire  to  "cut  his  losses."  But  Bellamy  having 
shown  him  the  black  side  of  the  books  explained  how  in 
twelve  months  from  that  date  the  paper  ought  to  be  not 
only  making  its  way,  but  making  a  good  profit.  He 
showed  him  the  steady  progression  of  the  advertising 
revenue,  which  if  it  continued  in  the  same  proportion 
would  secure  the  working  expenses  of  the  paper  by  the 
time  named.  And  in  his  ingenious  way  he  worked  out  a 
scheme  of  figures  which  looked,  on  the  face  of  them, 
satisfactory  and  promising.  "All  we  want,"  said  Bel- 
lamy, "is  £50,000  in  addition  to  the  sum  put  down  by  Cod- 
rington's  man.  For  that  small  figure  Bramshaw  can 
dominate  a  powerful  organ  of  opinion,  become  an  impor- 
tant person  in  his  Party,  and  enjoy  one  of  the  most  agree- 
able hobbies  open  to  a  rich  man.  If  you  want  any  little 
thing  for  yourself  such  as  an  editorial  chair,  make  your 
own  terms.  Or  if  Bramshaw  wants  to  put  in  his  own 
man — some  heaven-sent  genius  of  a  haughty  and  aristo- 
cratic temperament,  don't  you  mind  me.  I'm  ready  to 
hand  over  office  to-morrow." 

He  shook  hands  with  Frank,  and  said,  "Do  your  best, 
Luttrell.  Remember  you  will  be  helping  the  other  boys 
and  girls.  Send  me  a  wire  with  the  most  cheerful  news 
you  can." 

"I'll  try  my  hardest,"  said  Frank.  He  had  a  flushed 
face  and  was  painfully  excited. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  387 

"I  am  sure  you  will,"  said  Bellamy.  "You  are  a  scholar 
and  a  gentleman." 

Frank  had  half-an-hour  to  get  to  King's  Cross.  It  was 
not  too  much  time,  but  he  spent  three  minutes  of  it  in 
whispering  a  few  words  to  Katherine,  who  had  been 
wondering  why  he  had  been  such  an  unconscionable  time 
in  the  Chief's  room. 

She  became  even  more  excited  than  himself,  and  in  the 
passage  she  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  and  said — 

"Frank,  if  you  save  the  paper  I  will " 

"What?"  said  Frank.     "What?" 

"I  will  marry  you  the  very  next  day  if  you  like." 

"Honour  bright?"  he  said.  "Is  that  a  solemn  and 
sacred  promise?" 

They  had  both  been  smiling,  but  in  the  eyes  of  both  of 
them  there  was  something  more  than  merriment. 

"If  you  will  save  the  Rag "  said  Katherine  in  a  low 

voice. 

He  bent  down  and  kissed  her  on  the  lips. 

"I  am  going  to  have  a  try,"  he  said. 

Then  he  turned  and  ran  down  the  stairs,  and  in  less 
than  a  minute  found  himself  panting  in  a  hansom  cab 
on  the  way  to  King's  Cross. 

On  the  railway  journey  Frank  studied  his  brief,  and 
notebook  full  of  figures.  He  was  not  a  good  arithmeti- 
cian, but  he  concentrated  his  mind  on  those  sums  of  news- 
paper mathematics  and  mastered  them.  Because  upon 
the  figures  depended  the  fortunes  of  his  friends  and  col- 
leagues and  his  own  happiness.  If  he  could  persuade 
Bramshaw  he  would  win  Katherine.  The  thought  filled 
him  with  an  almost  feverish  emotion.  He  felt  quite  sick 
with  excitement.  At  times  a  gust  of  anxiety  and  hope 
swept  through  him.  What  a  joyous  thing  it  would  be 
if  he  could  save  the  paper!  He  had  been  a  reserved, 
sensitive  fellow  among  his  colleagues.  Some  of  them 


388  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

had  given  him  the  cold  shoulder.  Some  had  not  con- 
cealed their  jealousy  of  his  promotion.  Others  had 
looked  upon  him  as  a  snob  and  weakling.  But  they 
would  be  proud  of  him  if  he  did  this  thing.  He  and 
Codrington  would  be  the  heroes  of  Fleet  Street.  How 
strange  that  he  and  Codrington  of  all  people  in  the  office 
should  be  the  means  of  keeping  the  flag  flying!  They 
had  been  rivals.  Now  they  were  working  for  the  same 
cause,  and  they  would  share  the  glory.  And  Katherine 
would  be  his  reward.  It  was  his  chance!  His  whole 
happiness  in  life  depended  upon  his  playing  his  cards 
well.  He  must  keep  his  nerve.  He  must  not  get  too 
excited.  If  only  he  applied  to  Bramshaw  in  the  right 
way,  calling  upon  their  old  comradeship,  reminding  him 
of  his  old  ideals,  pointing  out  what  an  enormous  service  he 
would  do  to  the  nation  and  the  Party,  he  would  succeed. 
Surely,  Bramshaw  would  not  refuse!  Fifty  thousand 
pounds — it  was  but  a  bagatelle  to  a  man  who  owned  the 
biggest  coal-fields  of  the  North !  Towards  the  end  of  the 
journey  Frank  went  into  the  lavatory  carriage  to  wash, 
and  was  startled  at  the  bloodless,  haggard  face  in  the 
mirror  before  him,  and  by  the  burning  eyes  which  stared 
at  him.  He  must  calm  down.  He  was  overwrought  by 
this  racking  anxiety.  He  looked  like  a  ghost,  and  Bram- 
shaw would  be  scared  at  him. 

When  he  arrived  at  the  journey's  end  in  the  Yorkshire 
town  where  Bramshaw  Castle  dominated  the  heights,  he 
hired  a  hackney  carriage,  and,  after  a  cup  of  strong  tea 
which  pulled  his  jangled  nerves  together,  he  drove  straight 
up  to  the  sham  Gothic  buildirig  on  the  hill.  It  was  dark, 
and  as  he  drove  through  an  avenue  of  beech-trees  there 
was  only  a  dim  light  about  him,  and  deep  shadows  were 
flung  across  the  road  by  the  last  rays  of  the  sun.  Rooks 
were  cawing  noisily  on  the  tree-tops,  and  a  bat  skimmed 
in  short,  swift  flights  before  the  carriage.  Frank  was 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  389 

chilly,  and  as  the  shrewd  wind  of  a  Yorkshire  evening 
came  to  his  face  he  shivered.  All  his  courage  had  gone. 
He  was  filled  with  a  nervous  dread  of  asking  Bramshaw 
for  the  money.  After  all,  it  was  an  audacious  embassy, 
and  in  spite  of  their  old  comradeship  the  young  earl 
might  snub  him  for  his  impudence. 

When  the  avenue  came  to  an  end,  and  spread  into  a 
sweeping  carriage  drive,  Frank  saw  that  the  great  cas- 
tellated house  was  in  darkness  except  where  lights  glim- 
mered from  the  windows  to  the  right  of  the  archway. 
He  got  down  from  the  hackney  carriage  and  gave  a  sharp 
pull  to  the  iron  bell-handle,  and,  when  he  heard  the  pro- 
longed jingle- jangle  of  the  bell  inside,  the  sound  startled 
him  and  he  was  in  a  desperate  state  of  "funk/*  He  heard 
a  man's  footstep  coming  down  a  long  passage,  and  he 
took  a  deep  breath  and  prayed  for  self-command  and  a 
little  pluck.  Then  bolts  were  unbarred  and  an  elderly 
man-servant  stood  in  the  doorway,  holding  up  a  lamp. 

"Is  Lord  Bramshaw  at  home?"  said  Frank. 

"His  lordship  is  not  at  home,"  said  the  man. 

"Will  he  be  long?" 

"His  lordship  is  in  town." 

"In  town  ?"  said  Frank,  and  his  heart  went  to  the  bot- 
tom of  his  boots.  He  had  come  three  hundred  miles 
.and  seemed  to  have  travelled  for  three  hundred  hours, 
and  "his  lordship  was  in  town !"  What  a  damnable  anti- 
climax to  all  his  emotion ! 

He  stood  utterly  nonplussed.  What  a  fool  he  had  been 
to  come  all  this  way  without  sending  a  prepaid  telegram 
in  advance ! 

He  questioned  the  man  at  the  door,  who,  with  reluc- 
tance and  a  curt  disrespect,  divulged  the  fact  that  Lord 
Bramshaw  was  staying  at  the  Sports  Club  in  St.  James's 
Square  for  two  Or  three  days. 

Frank  got  back  into  his  carriage  and  drove  down  to  the 


390          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

town  again,  and  on  the  way  he  said  hard  things  against 
the  devil  who  had  tricked  him  with  such  fiendish  malevo- 
lence. What  on  earth  should  he  do  now?  It  was  im- 
possible to  get  back  to  town  that  night,  and  to-morrow 
night  the  paper  would  die.  He  had  only  twenty-four 
hours  before  him  in  which  to  save  or  lose  the  game.  He 
had  now  only  a  gambler's  chance. 

Luttrell  sent  off  a  telegram  to  Bellamy  with  the  news 
of  the  horrible  disappointment,  and  another  to  Bramshaw 
at  the  Sports  Club  begging  him  to  be  there  at  four  o'clock 
en  the  following  day,  as  he  wished  to  see  him  on  a  matter 
of  life  and  death.  That  was  the  earliest  time  he  could 
get  to  St.  James's  Square  from  this  small  Yorkshire  town 
with  an  atrocious  train  service. 

That  night  Luttrell  put  up  at  the  Bramshaw  Arms,  and 
sat  smoking  for  hours  in  the  bar-parlour  listening  to  the 
gossip  of  Yorkshire  yokels,  but  not  hearing  or  under- 
standing. He  was  utterly  wretched,  and  brooded  over 
the  tragedy  of  the  fruitless  journey.  He  slept  hardly  at 
all  that  night  under  the  oak  beams  of  his  bedroom,  and 
\\hen  he  rose  in  the  morning  and  shaved  himself  he  had 
an  aching  head,  and  felt  and  looked  horribly  ill.  There 
was  no  train  to  London  before  eleven-thirty,  and  he  trav- 
elled back  the  same  route  on  which  he  had  come  yester- 
day. 

At  four  o'clock  he  stood  in  the  hall  of  the  Sports  Club, 
staring  at  the  heads  of  antelopes  and  at  the  stuffed  lion, 
and  into  the  gaping  jaws  of  a  grinning  hippo,  and  waiting 
with  a  sickening  anxiety  for  the  return  of  the  page-boy 
who  had  gone  with  his  card  to  find  the  Earl  of  Bram- 
sham. 

"Will  you  come  this  way,  sir?  His  lordship  is  in  the 
smoking-room." 

Luttrell  drew  a  deep  breath  of  relief,  and  thanked  God 
he  had  found  his  man;  then  he  followed  the  page,  and 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  391 

making  his  way  past  the  outstretched  legs  of  well- 
groomed,  fresh-complexioned  men,  who  were  reading 
evening  papers  or  sleeping  as  peacefully  as  babes  in  the 
smoking-room  chairs,  saw  his  old  college  chum  in  .the  far 
corner. 

"Hulloh,  Luttrell,"  said  Lord  Bramshaw,  giving  him  a 
limp,  plump  hand.  "Glad  to  see  you.  It  seems  cen- 
turies since  we  used  to  talk  damned  rot  together.  Have 
a  whisky,  or  anything?" 

Luttrell  saw  that  his  friend  had  changed.  He  had  put 
on  flesh  during  the  past  few  years,  and  had  lost  the 
elegant,  graceful  figure  which  had  given  him  the  name 
of  Pretty  Poyning.  He  was  now  a  rather  stolid,  flabby 
young  man,  and  there  was  a  trace  of  vulgarity  in  his 
manner.  - 

Luttrell  sat  down  and  had  some  coffee,  while  Bramshaw 
said  it  was  devilish  funny  weather  for  the  time  of  year, 
and  gave  an  account  of  a  new  piece  at  the  Gaiety  Theatre 
to  which  he  had  been  the  night  before.  There  were  some 
extremely  jolly  little  girls  on  show,  and  if  Luttrell  had 
not  been  he  certainly  ought  to  make  a  point  of  going. 

Half  an  hour  passed  before  Luttrell  could  find  an 
opening  for  his  own  line  of  conversation. 

"Weren't  you  rather  surprised  to  get  a  wire  from  me 
with  the  Bramshaw  stamp  on  it?"  he  asked. 

"Did  you  send  it  from  Bramshaw!  'Pon  my  soul  I 
didn't  notice.  Ghastly  place,  isn't  it?  If  it  weren't  for  my 
infernal  title  I  would  sell  the  whole  bag  of  tricks.  That 
Gothic  castle  of  mine  gives  me  the  horrors  every  time 
I  set  eyes  on  it." 

Luttrell  plunged. 

"I  wanted  to  speak  to  you  about  something  of  the  great- 
est importance." 

"Let's  see;  you  said  something  about  life  and  death, 


392  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

didn't  you  ?  I  suppose  that  was  hyperbole.  You  always 
tised  to  be  a  fellow  for  picturesque  imagery,  Luttrell." 

He  smiled  and  looked  at  Luttrell  in  a  curious  way. 

"You  look  a  bit  pulled  down/'  he  said.  "You  ought 
to  get  away  to  the  south  of  France  for  a  bit.  Join  me, 
won't  you  ?  I  have  taken  a  little  box  at  Biarritz.  There 
is  a  charming  society  there.  All  sorts  of  lovely  ladies." 

"I  have  to  earn  my  living,"  said  Frank. 

"Lucky  beggar,"  said  Bramshaw.  "I'll  bet  you  don't 
get  half  so  bored  with  yourself  as  I  do." 

This  gave  Frank  his  opportunity,  and  he  did  not  let 
it  escape.  He  put  before  Lord  Bramshaw  the  way  in 
which  he  could  escape  from  boredom.  He  must  buy  a 
paper.  It  would  give  him  endless  interest  and  great 
power.  He  would  be  doing  a  great  service  to  the  country 
and  to  the  Party. 

"Which  Party?"  asked  Bramshaw. 

"Why,  ours,  of  course,"  said  Frank. 

Bramshaw  seemed  to  be  groping  back  down  the  aisles 
of  memory. 

"Let's  see,  we  used  to  be  Social  Democrats,  or  some- 
thing, didn't  we?" 

"You  were  an  ardent  Liberal,"  said  Frank,  with  some- 
thing like  irritation  in  his  voice.  The  matter  was  too 
serious  for  jesting. 

"Oh,  most  fellows  go  through  that  phase,"  said  Bram- 
shaw carelessly.  "It's  like  measles,  and  poetry,  and 
calf-love.  But,  of  course,  now  I've  come  into  the  title 
and  all  that  I  have  settled  down.  One  has  to  look  after 
one's  property,  and  those  Rads  would  grab  every  damn 
thing  they  could  lay  their  hands  on." 

Frank  was  dismayed.  This  was  a  pretty  introduction 
to  a  demand  for  £50,000  to  support  a  Liberal  paper ! 

But  he  rallied  his  forces,  and  appealed  to  Bramshaw's 
old  idealism,  his  old  comradeship,  his  sworn  vows  that 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  393 

when  he  came  into  his  money  he  would  use  it  on  behalf  of 
humanity. 

Bramshaw's  plump  face  turned  pink. 

"Draw  it  mild,  Luttrell,"  he  said,  laughing  rather  pain- 
fully. "Did  I  talk  such  asinine  things  as  that  ?  .  .  .  Any- 
how, it's  beastly  rough  on  a  fellow  to  call  up  the  indis- 
cretions of  his  teens." 

Luttrell  shifted  his  ground  and  based  his  plea  on  more 
personal  reasons.  He  gave  Bramshaw  an  idea  of  the 
inside  of  a  newspaper  office,  and  explained  the  tragedy 
which  would  fall  upon  so  many  lives  if  the  paper  went 
under.  It  would  be  a  bad  blow  to  himself.  Wouldn't 
he  stretch  out  a  helping  hand  for  the  sake  of  a  college 
chum  ?  It  would  mean  so  very  little  to  him. 

"What  is  it  you  want  me  to  do  ?"  said  Bramshaw  good- 
naturedly.  Frank's  words  had  touched  him. 

"I  want  you  to  put  down  £50,000." 

Bramshaw  put  down  his  glass  of  whisky  and  looked 
as  if  he  would  have  a  stroke  of  apoplexy.  He  put  his 
plump  finger  inside  the  neck  of  his  collar  and  loosened  it. 

"£50,000!"  he  said.  "Good  God!  .  .  .  Look  here,  if  a 
hundred  quid  are  any  good  to  you " 

Frank  pleaded  with  him.  In  a  low,  thrilling  voice  he 
put  forward  every  argument  he  could  think  of.  He  re- 
cited figures  which  he  had  learnt  by  heart  in  the  train. 
He  showed  how  Bramshaw  could  get  a  good  profit  for 
his  money.  He  spoke  of  the  immense  power  he  would 
wield.  He  said  how  five  hundred  men  and  the  whole 
Liberal  Party  would  praise  him  as  a  benefactor.  There 
were  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  his  words  came  from  a  full 
heart. 

But  Bramshaw  became  cold  and  put  on  the  solemn 
pomposity  of  a  young  man  of  high  rank. 

"I  wish  I  could  oblige  you,"  he  said.  "But  it  is  quite 
impossible.  I  owe  a  duty  to  my  position  in  life,  and  to 


394  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

my  class.  It  would  go  seriously  against  my  conscience 
to  bolster  up  a  Liberal  paper.  This  Government  is  ruin- 
ing the  country.  Why,  damn  it  all,  my  solicitors  tell  me 
that  I  shall  be  a  poor  man  if  the  financial  stability  of  the 
country  continues  to  be  undermined  in  this  disastrous 
way.  .  .  .  Have  another  whisky,  Luttrell,  and  let's  drop 
this  most  unprofitable  conversation/' 

Luttrell  did  not  have  another  whisky,  but  in  a  few 
minutes  left  the  Sports  Club  with  despair  in  his  heart  and 
with  a  bitter  hatred  of  that  fat  young  peer  who  had  once 
been  his  friend. 

He  had  failed  .  .  .  and  to-night  the  paper  would  die ! 
He  had  failed,  and  he  could  not  get  his  great  reward. 
Katherine  was  lost  to  him. 

He  went  to  his  office  utterly  miserable.  It  was  a  quar- 
ter to  six  o'clock,  and  everything  was  going  on  almost  as 
usual.  The  night  men  had  just  come  in  and  the  composi- 
tors were  trooping  upstairs,  messenger  boys  were  bring- 
ing in  press  telegrams,  there  was  all  the  activity  of  a  great 
newspaper  office.  No  one  would  dream  that  this  night 
could  be  its  last  night.  Even  Luttrell  did  not  believe  it  now 
that  he  had  come  back  to  the  familiar  scenes.  He  accused 
himself  of  romancing,  and  was  inclined  to  be  ashamed  of 
his  emotionalism.  But  presently  he  began  to  realise  that 
things  were  not  quite  the  same  as  usual.  The  day  men 
on  the  literary  business  staff,  who  generally  left  at  six 
o'clock,  were  staying  on,  and  there  was  an  air  of  sup- 
pressed excitement  among  them.  He  saw  the  secretary 
in  the  corridor  having  a  whispering  conversation  with 
one  of  the  canvassers. 

"Any  news  ?"  said  Luttrell,  as  he  passed.  The  secretary 
smiled  and  pulled  his  beard.  "We  shall  know  the  best 
to-night,"  he  said,  with  a  cheerfulness  that  was  almost 
suspicious. 

Luttrell  knew  that  it  was  useless  to  cross-examine  him, 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  395 

and  went  to  his  own  room.  There  was  a  full  crowd  there 
with  the  exception  of  Codrington. 

Katherine  came  quickly  to  him  and  said  "Well?"  in  a 
whisper.  Then  she  searched  his  face  and  saw  its  gloom. 
"Oh !"  she  said  rather  piteously.  Two  or  three  men  were 
looking  rather  curiously.  Brandon,  who  seemed  to  know 
something,  moved  towards  him  and  said  "Come  outside, 
Luttrell."  In  the  passage  Katherine  and  Brandon  faced 
him  and  asked  him  for  a  word  of  news,  bad  or  good. 

"I  have  failed,"  he  said,  simply.  "I  did  my  best,  but 
it  was  a  wild-goose  chase." 

"Oh,  Frank,"  said  Katherine,  "surely  you  could  have 
done  something?" 

It  was  a  reproach  and  it  stabbed  him. 

"No,  I  could  do  nothing.  Do  you  think  you  could  have 
done  better  ?" 

"Perhaps,"  she  said,  and  went  back  with  a  rather  white 
face  to  her  room. 

It  was  the  last  stroke,  and  Frank  was  badly  hit.  He 
looked  so  knocked-out  that  Brandon  took  his  arm  and 
said,  "You  want  something  to  eat  and  drink,  old  man. 
Let's  go  and  have  a  meal.  It  is  no  use  hanging  about 
here." 

"1  must  tell  Bellamy,"  said  Luttrell.  "He  is  waiting 
for  news." 

But  the  proprietor  was  inside  with  Codrington  and  a 
stranger.  Bellamy  had  given  orders  that  no  one  was  to 
be  admitted  until  he  rang  the  bell.  So  Frank  sent  in  a 
note  with  a  brief  line  of  regret  for  the  failure  of  his  em- 
bassy, and  afterwards  went  out  to  a  restaurant  with  Bran- 
don. They  shared  a  bottle  of  wine,  and  it  put  a  little 
heart  into  Frank  and  brought  a  touch  of  colour  into  his 
cheeks.  But  it  was  a  serious  meal  and  mainly  silent. 
Neither  of  them  felt  in  a  mood  for  light  converse.  But 
Brandon  gave  Frank  the  latest  information  regarding  the 


396          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

situation,  as  far  as  it  was  known  by  rumour  and  hearsay. 
The  general  feeling  in  the  office  was  that  Benjamin  Har- 
rison wanted  to  kill  his  own  paper.  He  was  playing  dog 
in  the  manger,  and,  not  having  made  a  success  of  the 
paper,  he  did  not  want  any  one  else  to  do  so.  Un- 
doubtedly certain  offers  had  been  made.  Actual  money 
had  been  paid  down  to  get  an  option  on  it,  but  for  some 
reason  or  other  nothing  had  yet  been  settled.  Of  course, 
the  truth  of  the  whole  business  could  not  be  known,  per- 
haps never  would  be  known.  Certainly,  there  were  trai- 
tors in  the  camp,  and  it  was  highly  probable  that  the  pro- 
prietor himself  was  playing  off  one  combination  against 
another  in  order  to  keep  them  all  at  bay  until  twelve 
o'clock  that  night,  when  he  would  issue  the  death-war- 
rant. 

"On  the  other  hand,"  said  Brandon,  "the  optimists  still 
hold  that  Bellamy  has  had  a  trump-card  up  his  sleeve  all 
this  time,  which  he  will  put  on  the  table  at  the  eleventh 
hour.  He  is  an  astute  little  diplomat." 

"How  about  Codrington?"  said  Luttrell. 

"He  has  brought  his  man  up,  and  both  of  them  are 
inside  Bellamy's  room  now.  I  should  take  off  my  hat  to 
Codrington  if  he  really  picked  the  chestnuts  out  of  the 
fire/' 

They  were  silent  after  this  until  over  a  coffee  and 
liqueur  Brandon  puffed  out  a  cloud  of  smoke  and  said 
very  gloomily,  "God  knows  what  will  happen  to  us  all, 
Luttrell,  if  the  doors  close  to-night.  Out  into  the  streets 
we  go  without  a  penny-piece  of  compensation,  and  then 
it  will  be  the  law  of  the  jungle  among  us.  There  is  not 
room  for  half  of  us  in  Fleet  Street  if  the  paper  goes 
under.  New  men  have  filled  up  the  old  places.  ...  It 
will  go  badly  with  me.  I  am  getting  on  in  years,  and 
I  can't  begin  all  over  again.  I  have  staled,  and  that's  the 
painful  truth." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  397 

'I  am  worse  off,"  said  Luttrell  gloomily.  "I  hardly 
know  a  soul  outside  our  own  show." 

They  went  back  to  the  office  at  nine  o'clock  and  joined 
their  colleagues.  Once  again  the  staff  waited  for  the  ver- 
dict, and  this  time  it  was  to  be  final.  There  could  be  no 
further  postponement.  The  men  talked  in  low  voices. 
The  hours  dragged  by  on  leaden  wings.  Occasionally 
there  was  a  momentary  excitement  when  Bellamy's  door 
opened  and  shut.  Again  some  of  the  men  were  work- 
ing, turning  out  copy  for  the  next  day's  paper.  Again 
some  of  them  tried  to  cheer  each  other  up  by  telling 
funny  stories,  and  gusts  of  laughter  shattered  the  silence, 
but  were  quickly  spent.  Katherine  came  over  to  Frank 
and  said,  "I'm  sorry.  I  did  not  mean  to  say  what  I  did. 
I  was  overwrought.  Forgive  me,  Frank,  will  you  ?" 

"There  is  nothing  to  forgive/'  he  said.  "Failure  is 
always  inexcusable." 

"No,"  said  Katherine,  "the  men  who  try  are  the 
heroes." 

He  was  glad  she  spoke  like  that.  It  healed  his  wound, 
and  when  Margaret  Hubbard  came  and  sat  on  the  floor  by 
the  fireplace  and  handed  up  chocolates  from  a  big  box 
to  Katherine  and  Luttrell  and  Brandon,  and  any  others 
who  liked  to  apply,  the  misery  of  this  scene  was  softened 
for  Frank  himself,  sitting  on  the  coal-scuttle  next  to 
Katherine  who  was  on  an  office  stool,  with  Quin  the  other 
side  on  an  upturned  waste-paper  basket.  Katherine  put 
her  hand  on  his  shoulder.  It  was  a  sign  of  sympathy  and 
it  was  comforting. 

At  eleven  o'clock  there  was  a  sensation  when  Silas 
Bellamy  put  his  head  into  the  room. 

"Halloh,"  he  said.    "Going  strong?" 

They  called  to  him  and  pleaded  for  news.  Katherine 
sprang  up  and  seized  him  by  the  arm  and  pulled  him  into 
the  room. 


398  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Tell  us,"  she  said.  "For  heaven's  sake  put  us  out  of 
our  misery.  Is  it  all  right  with  the  paper?" 

He  laughed  and  stood  pulling  his  little  fair  moustache. 
His  eyes  were  filled  with  great  tenderness  as  he  looked 
round  the  room  and  saw  so  many  of  the  men  who  had 
given  loyal  service  to  him,  and  who  had  gone  on  many 
great  adventures  on  behalf  of  the  Rag. 

"The  proprietor  will  make  the  announcement  to  you 
at  one  o'clock,"  he  said.  "Don't  ask  me  questions,  boys, 
and  keep  your  hearts  up." 

"Not  till  one !"  cried  several  voices. 

"No,"  said  Bellamy;  "we  must  see  the  paper  through 
first.  The  men  upstairs  must  do  their  job.  Then  we  all 
assemble  in  the  Board  Room." 

He  did  not  say  any  more  about  the  situation,  and  what 
he  had  said  might  be  taken  either  way.  But  he  sat  chat- 
ting for  a  while  and  told  two  or  three  merry  stories  and 
made  every  one  laugh,  and  laughed  himself  quite  natur- 
ally and  with  real  enjoyment.  Then  he  went  away,  say- 
ing that  he  had  another  conference  with  Benjamin  Har- 
rison. 

"Lord !"  he  said,  "how  glad  I  will  be  when  this  crisis 
is  over.  I  haven't  had  any  sleep  for  two  days  and  nights." 

When  he  had  gone  there  was  a  silence,  and  then  Quin 
said,  "What  do  you  think  of  it?  Have  we  turned  the 
corner  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  one  of  the  men.  "He  wouldn't  have  been 
so  cheerful  if  the  end  was  near.'* 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Margaret  Hubbard  thoughtfully. 
"There  was  something  rather  queer  in  his  eyes." 

At  last  one  o'clock  came,  and  from  every  part  of  the 
building  men  trooped  down  to  the  Board  Room — composi- 
tors, departmental  editors,  reporters,  leader-writers,  the 
business  men — all  except  the  machine  men  who  were 
printing  the  morning  issue.  The  room  was  dimly 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  399 

lighted,  but  outside  the  windows  hung  the  long  greenish 
lights  which  had  distinguished  the  great  newspaper  office 
at  night.  There  was  a  rattle  of  carts  in  the  streets  and 
the  voices  of  the  newsvendors  waiting  for  the  first  edi- 
tion. But  inside  the  room  there  was  a  silence  as  the  great 
staff  grouped  themselves  all  round,  the  reporting  staff 
in  a  bunch  together  near  a  raised  dais  at  the  end  of  the 
room,  where  chairs  had  been  placed  for  the  proprietor, 
the  editor,  the  news-editor,  and  the  business  manager. 
Luttrell,  who  was  next  to  Katherine  and  Margaret  Hub- 
bard,  looked  round  upon  all  the  faces  of  his  colleagues. 
They  were  very  grave,  many  of  them  very  pale,  with 
anxious  eyes.  It  was  not  often  the  staff  had  been  gath- 
ered together  like  this  in  one  body,  and  the  size  of  it 
astonished  Luttrell.  And  he  was  moved  with  a  deep  emo- 
tion at  the  sight  of  all  those  anxious  faces,  and  the  in- 
tense silence  was  oppressive  and  rather  dreadful.  Then 
a  door  at  the  end  opened  and  Benjamin  Harrison  came  in, 
with  Silas  Bellamy  and  Vicary  and  the  business  manager. 

Bellamy  gave  a  rather  timid  glance  towards  all  the  men, 
and  then  the  proprietor  bent  down  and  whispered  a  few 
words  to  him.  Benjamin  Harrison  himself  was  white 
and  haggard  and  very  weary  looking.  He  too  looked 
round  the  room  with  a  nervous  glance.  Vicary  had  a 
bull-dog  look  on  his  face  and  his  eyes  were  very  gloomy. 

Without  any  preliminaries  the  proprietor  rose,  and 
clearing  his  throat  spoke  in  a  low,  hesitating  voice,  but 
every  word  was  distinct  in  that  silent,  crowded  room. 

"I  deeply  regret  to  say  that  a  note,  set  up  by  different 
hands,  so  that  it  will  be  news  to  most  of  you,  will  appear 
in  the  morning's  issue,  announcing  that  the  paper  has 
ended  its  career." 

He  paused,  but  there  was  no  sound  in  that  room  except 
a  kind  of  quivering  sigh,  and  a  slight  movement  among 
the  men  at  the  back. 


400          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

"Its  career,"  said  the  proprietor,  "has  been  compara- 
tively short,  but  it  has  not  been  ignoble.  In  spite  of 
financial  failure  we  have  done  a  great  deal  of  good  work, 
and  obtained  a  high,  perhaps  even  a  unique  reputation  as 
a  paper  animated  by  high  ideals  and  by  an  honest  pur- 
pose." 

He  went  on  speaking  in  carefully-chosen  phrases.  He 
spoke  of  the  great  burden  that  had  been  on  his  shoulders 
— he  had  found  it  more  than  he  could  justly  support — and 
of  the  immense  efforts  that  had  been  made  to  secure  fresh 
capital.  It  was  with  real  grief,  he  said,  that  he  had  to 
admit  that  all  those  efforts  had  been  vain — for  reasons 
into  which  he  need  not  enter.  He  must  pay  a  high  tribute 
to  the  staff,  which  had  done  admirable  and  brilliant 
service.  He  must  also  acknowledge  his  deep  indebtedness 
to  Mr.  Bellamy,  their  gallant  editor,  and  to  Mr.  Vicary 
their  indefatigable  news-editor,  and  to  Mr.  Harker  their 
business  manager,  to  whose  work — and  so  on,  and  so  on. 

But  what  did  it  all  matter  ?  The  men  listened  to  these 
phrases,  perhaps  without  hearing.  They  had  heard 
enough.  The  paper  was  dead.  In  a  little  while  they 
would  all  be  on  the  streets.  Nothing  mattered  but  that. 

Luttrell  looked  round  at  all  the  faces.  The  men 
seemed  to  have  been  stunned.  They  were  staring  at  the 
proprietor  in  a  dazed  way,  white  to  the  lips.  It  was  a 
sickening  sight.  Then  he  looked  at  Katherine  by  his  side, 
and  at  Margaret  Hubbard.  Katherine  was  crying,  quite 
quietly,  with  tears  streaming  from  her  eyes.  Margaret 
was  pale  with  serious,  sorrowful  eyes. 

The  proprietor  sat  down  and  then  Silas  Bellamy  rose, 
and  in  a  broken  voice  thanked  all  the  men — his  boys,  as 
he  called  them — for  their  splendid,  magnificent  work.  No 
editor  had  ever  had  such  loyalty,  nor  a  more  brilliant  and 
gallant  staff.  He  could  only  assure  them  that  he  had 
done  his  best  to  save  the  paper.  Mr.  Harrison  would  bear 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  401 

him  out  that  he  had  not  spared  himself  in  his  most  des- 
perate endeavours  to  avert  this  great  tragedy.  Even  to 
the  last  hour  he  had  hoped  that  some  way  out  could  be 
found.  Fate  had  decided  otherwise. 

He,  too,  sat  down  nervously.  He  was  deeply  moved 
and  had  difficulty  in  hiding  his  emotion. 

Then,  for  the  first  time,  the  silence  was  broken.  The 
men  cheered  their  editor  with  a  great  demonstration  of 
enthusiasm  and  affection.  The  cheers  made  the  window- 
panes  rattle,  and  in  that  early  hour  in  the  morning  in 
which  the  paper  had  died,  in  the  dimly-lighted  room,  and 
after  the  long  silence,  the  noise  of  those  cheers  was 
startling  and  extraordinarily  impressive  in  its  effect. 

The  business  manager  then  rose.  He  was  a  fat,  flabby 
man,  and  his  plump  hands  fidgeted  with  the  lapels  of  his 
frock  coat.  He  spoke  in  suave,  oily  platitudes,  lavishing 
praise  upon  their  "noble,  their  self-sacrificing,  their  gen- 
erous, high-souled  young  proprietor."  He  spoke  in  this 
strain  for  five  minutes,  and  when  he  sat  down  he  seemed 
to  expect  applause.  But  not  a  voice  said,  "Hear,  hear," 
and  there  was  no  whisper  of  a  cheer. 

Everyone  waited,  as  though  something  else  would  hap- 
pen. But  nothing  more  took  place  except  the  hurried  exit 
of  Benjamin  Harrison  followed  by  the  business  manager, 
who  kept  close  to  his  coat  tails,  and  by  Bellamy  and 
Vicary  who  went  together  speaking  in  low  tones. 

A  murmur  of  voices  rose  in  the  room.  One  man 
fainted  and  was  leaning  back  on  a  chair  with  his  head 
flopping  on  his  chest. 

Suddenly  the  greenish  lights  hanging  outside  the  office 
were  put  out.  No  doubt  it  was  the  hour  for  their  ex- 
tinction, but  it  seemed  a  symbolical  act.  The  lights  had 
gone  out.  The  ship  had  gone  down. 

The  men  made  their  way  into  the  passage.  Even  now 
they  spoke  only  in  whispers  to  each  other,  or  were  quite 


402  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

silent,  as  though  still  stunned  by  the  shock  of  calamity. 

Some  of  them  went  back  to  their  own  rooms.  Little 
Birkenshaw  the  sporting  editor  was  weeping  like  a  child, 
with  his  head  on  his  arms  outstretched  upon  his  desk. 
Other  men  were  crying,  and  did  not  hide  their  tears. 

Percival  Phillimore,  the  literary  editor,  had  taken  it 
badly.  Frank  met  him  in  the  passage,  and  he  put  his 
hand  to  his  head  and  moaned. 

"Oh,  my  God  I"  he  said.  "Oh,  my  God !  How  can  I 
go  back  to  my  wife  and  children  ?" 

Frank  drew  him  into  a  side  room  and  tried  to  comfort 
him.  He  seemed  quite  broken. 

Several  of  the  men,  among  them  Vicary  and  Quin  and 
Codrington,  had  gone  into  Bellamy's  room.  The  Chief 
was  very  tired,  very  serious.  He  had  not  a  single  quip^ 
or  jest.  He  was  in  no  mood  for  a  merry  tale.  He  re- 
vealed some  of  the  negotiations  which  had  taken  place, 
and  pulled  his  reddish-brown  eyebrows,  and  said,  "It's 
more  than  a  calamity — it's  a  crime.  There  is  no  earthly 
reason  why  the  paper  should  not  be  flourishing.  ...  I 
can't  tell  you  all,  but  I  want  you  to  believe  that  I  did  my 
best." 

Katherine  was  weeping  piteously  and  could  not  be  com- 
forted. Margaret  Hubbard  was  with  her  holding  her 
hand,  and  Frank  bent  over  her  and  whispered  to  her,  but 
she  wrung  her  hands,  and  said,  "Go  away,  Frank  ...  I 
can't  bear  it.  Forgive  me." 

Margaret  Hubbard  said,  "I  think  you  had  better  call  a 
cab  for  us,  Frank."  Then  she  said  bitterly,  "This  is  a 
black  night's  work.  I  think  Benjamin  Harrison  ought  to 
suffer  for  it." 

Luttrell  went  for  the  cab,  and  took  the  two  girls  down 
to  it.  He  would  have  kissed  Katherine's  hand,  but  she 
put  her  arms  on  his  shoulders  and  kissed  him  on  the  lips, 
and  her  tears  wetted  his  cheeks. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  403 

"When  shall  we  meet  again?"  said  Frank,  "and 
where?" 

"Come  round  to  the  flat,  Frank,  to-morrow,"  said  Mar- 
garet Hubbard. 

They  then  drove  away,  and  Frank  went  back  to  the 
office  which  was  now  in  semi-darkness,  many  of  the  lights 
having  been  turned  out.  Codrington  came  out  of  Bel- 
lamy's room  and  put  his  hand  on  Frank's  shoulder  and 
walked  with  him  into  what  had  once  been  the  reporters' 
room.  It  was  now  only  one  of  the  death  chambers. 

"Luttrell,"  said  Codrington,  "I  can't  believe  it.  I  re- 
fuse to  believe  that  the  paper  has  stopped.  It  is  a  hor- 
rible nightmare.  It  cannot  be  true." 

He  sat  down  and  put  his  hands  to  his  head. 

"Good  God,"  he  said,  "it  is  too  horrible !" 

In  little  groups  the  men  went  out  of  the  building — out 
into  Fleet  Street,  where  they  shook  hands,  and  then  went 
home  to  tell  the  bad  news  to  women  who  had  been  sitting 
up  in  loneliness. 

In  the  streets  there  were  groups  of  compositors.  Some 
of  them  were  cursing  Benjamin  Harrison  with  fierce 
oaths.  Others  were  too  broken  to  say  anything,  but  stood 
listening  in  a  helpless,  hopeless  way  to  their  comrades. 
Then  they  too  separated,  and,  with  a  "Good-night,  all," 
went  to  the  little  houses  in  mean  streets,  where  their 
children  lay  sleeping. 

Luttrell  and  Codrington  were  the  last  men  left  in  the 
office.  They  stayed  talking  for  an  hour.  Codrington  was 
a  mere  ghost  of  a  man.  His  face  was  ashen  grey  and  his 
eyes  were  sunken  in  their  sockets.  But  he  seemed  loth 
to  leave  the  office,  and  sat  smoking  cigarettes  and  indulg- 
ing in  a  melancholy  retrospect  and  in  a  still  more  melan- 
choly forecast  of  the  future. 

"To  me,"  he  said,  "this  is  utter  and  irretrievable  ruin. 


404          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

I  have  nothing  left  but  my  personality,  which  seems  a 
poor  thing  to-night/' 

And,  indeed,  for  the  first  time  since  Frank  had  known 
him  Codrington  spoke  naturally  and  simply.  The  calam- 
ity had  stripped  him  of  his  elegant  affectations.  Then  at 
last  he  went  with  Luttrell  down  the  office  steps,  and  in 
the  street  they  turned  and  looked  up  at  the  dark  and 
silent  building. 

"Dead !  Dead !"  said  Codrington,  in  a  broken  voice.  He 
raised  his  hat  as  though  in  the  presence  of  death,  and 
then,  with  a  wave  of  the  hand  to  Luttrell,  strode  away. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  downfall  of  the  paper  was  a  surprise  and  grief  to 
the  public.  Indeed,  it  was  remarkable  how  much  praise 
was  given  to  it  now  that  it  was  dead.  Liberals  who  had 
never  subscribed  to  it  said  that  its  debacle  was  no  less 
than  a  tragedy  to  the  Party.  Liberal  papers  which  had 
carefully  abstained  from  quoting  it,  not  wishing  to  give 
a  free  advertisement  to  a  rival,  published  leading  articles 
in  which  it  was  declared  that  the  disappearance  of  this 
morning  journal  was  an  incalculable  loss  to  the  English 
Press.  Even  from  Conservative  papers  there  came  trib- 
utes to  the  high  ideals,  the  unswerving  honesty,  the  fair 
play,  the  brilliant  literary  style,  and  the  fine  tone  of  their 
"talented  contemporary."  As  in  the  case  of  many  public 
men,  the  virtues  of  the  paper  were  only  recognised  when 
it  had  gone  to  the  grave. 

But  only  one  London  newspaper  had  a  word  of  sym- 
pathy for  all  those  men  and  women  who,  it  said,  "had 
gone  into  the  street,  and,  in  the  present  condition  of  the 
newspaper  world,  may  find  it  no  easy  thing  to  obtain 
new  places.  Inevitably  to  many  of  these  journalists  there 
will  be  a  time  of  anxiety,  disappointment  and  hardship." 

That  expression  of  sympathy  did  not  exaggerate  the 
situation.  Not  within  the  living  memory  of  Fleet  Street 
had  there  been  the  downfall  of  so  great  a  paper  with  its 
staff.  The  news  of  its  death  had  come  as  a  blow  not  only 
to  the  men  and  women  in  the  Fleet  Street  office,  but  to 
many  journalists  scattered  over  Europe — the  special  cor- 
respondents in  Paris,  Berlin,  Rome  and  other  capitals, 
who  came  hurrying  homewards  with  heavy  hearts,  to 

405 


406          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

increase  the  ranks  of  the  outcasts,  and  to  make  the  rivalry 
among  them  more  deadly. 

Perhaps  the  most  pitiable  thing  in  the  calamity  was 
this  competition  among  comrades  in  misfortune,  who  by 
the  law  of  self-preservation  were  bound  to  strive  for 
places  coveted  by  others  as  much,  or  more,  in  need  of 
them.  There  was  an  invasion  of  every  newspaper  office 
in  London,  and  it  is  recorded  in  the  annals  of  Fleet  Street 
that  one  editor  of  a  Conservative  paper  received  no  less 
than  nineteen  visits  in  one  morning  from  the  staff  of  The 
Liberal.  To  each  of  the  applicants  he  returned  the  same 
answer :  "Very  sorry,  my  staff  is  far  too  large  already." 
Several  editors,  and  not  those  of  the  hardest  hearts,  re- 
fused to  see  any  members  of  the  shipwrecked  crew. 
They  had  no  vacant  posts,  and  it  was  waste  of  time  to 
say  sympathetic  things. 

Some  men  like  Luttrell  and  Codrington  had  too  much 
pride  or  too  little  "push"  to  send  in  a  card  to  a  single 
newspaper  office. 

"What's  the  good,  my  dear  fellow?"  said  Codrington. 
"Let  us  at  least  wait  until  the  crowd  has  cleared  off  a 
little.  Then,  perhaps,  some  office-boy  will  die  of  eating 
too  many  brandy-balls,  and  you  or  I  may  be  given  his 
empty  stool." 

Frank  Luttrell  was  suffering  severely  from  reaction 
after  a  month's  excitement,  and  had  already  abandoned 
hope.  He  could  only  brood  over  the  cruelty  of  his  fate. 
Just  as  success  had  been  within  his  grasp  it  had  been 
snatched  out  of  his  hands  by  fickle  fortune.  He  had  been 
broken  on  the  wheel  of  Fleet  Street  and  flung  into  the 
dust-heap.  This  was  the  reward  of  his  days  of  arduous 
work,  of  his  humiliations,  of  his  daily  loss  of  self-respect ! 
It  would  have  been  better  for  him  if  he  had  stayed  at  the 
Abbey  School  teaching  the  elements  of  Latin  grammar 
to  young  louts.  At  least  he  would  not  have  met  Kath- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  40^ 

erine  Halstead  and  lived  in  a  dream  from  whidi  he  had 
now  awakened  to  the  cold  reality  of  failure. 

He  had  been  brought  to  such  a  low  condition  of  mind 
that  he  shirked  meeting  his  old  colleagues  at  the  ren- 
dezvous which  they  made  in  the  smoking-room  of  a  Fleet 
Street  tavern,  and  shut  himself  in  his  own  room  calcu- 
lating how  long  his  small  savings  would  keep  him  this 
side  of  starvation,  and  shedding  weak  tears  when  he 
thought  of  the  miserable  prospect  in  front  of  him.  With 
so  many  experienced  and  well-known  journalists  looking 
for  jobs,  he  did  not  buoy  himself  up  with  any  false  hope 
that  he  would  receive  a  favourable  hearing  from  any  edi- 
tor in  London. 

He  sat  down  and  tried  to  write  some  special  articles 
and  short  stories,  or  Spectator  essays.  He  would  not 
show  the  white  feather,  if  he  could  help  it,  and  it  was 
just  possible  that  he  could  "keep  his  end  up/'  as  he  called 
it,  by  freelance  work  as  in  the  old  days  before  he  joined 
the  Rag.  He  had  learnt  a  good  deal  since  that  time,  and 
it  ought  to  come  easy  to  him. 

But  Frank  Luttrell  found  to  his  increasing  terror,  like 
many  other  writers  of  temperament  who  have  suffered 
from  the  shock  of  disaster,  that  his  brain  refused  to  work. 
His  imagination  seemed  as  dead  as  his  old  paper.  He  had 
not  a  single  idea  in  his  head,  and  he  could  not  even  write 
a  paragraph  of  decent  English.  He  smoked  innumerable 
pipes,  which  still  further  hastened  the  ruin  of  his  nerves, 
was  devilishly  tempted  to  take  to  drink,  and  only  re- 
sisted the  temptation  because  he  had  a  photograph  of 
Katherine  Halstead  on  his  mantelpiece,  and  her  image 
in  his  heart.  Within  a  few  weeks  of  the  death  of  the 
paper,  he  was  well  along  that  dark  road  which  leads  ta 
the  dreadful  abyss  of  melancholia. 

It  was  owing  to  Edmund  Grattan  that  Frank  was  saved 
from  that  tragedy.  Grattan  was  the  Great  Heart  of  these 


408          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

days  to  more  than  one  member  of  the  Rag.  Although 
for  years  he  had  lived  an  adventurous  life  and  must  have 
passed  through  many  periods  of  almost  starvation  pov- 
erty, it  appeared,  according  to  his  own  statement,  that 
the  luck  had  been  his  way  of  late,  and  that  he  had  a 
"stocking"  full  to  the  brim  of  gold  pieces  of  the  realm. 
He  was  almost  blatant  in  his  boast  of  wealth,  and  to  hear 
him  talk  one  might  have  imagined  that  this  seedily- 
dressed  little  man  who  lived  in  a  Soho  slum  had  more 
money  than  he  knew  what  to  do  with.  The  truth  was, 
as  Luttrell  afterwards  discovered,  that  he  had  a  bank 
balance  of  exactly  one  hundred  pounds,  and  his  bragging 
of  secret  hoards  was  only  to  give  him  an  excuse  to  lend 
five-pound  notes  to  friends  whom  he  knew  to  be  desti- 
tute. 

He  had  come  round  to  Frank's  room  early  on  the  morn- 
ing after  the  catastrophe  and  endeavoured  to  rouse  his 
friend's  spirits  by  optimistic  assertions  that  as  far  as 
Luttrell  was  concerned  this  was  the  very  finest  thing 
that  could  have  happened  to  him.  Luttrell,  he  said,  was 
too  fine  a  blade  to  be  put  to  chopping  wood.  And  varying 
his  metaphor  he  went  on  to  say  that  Pegasus  in  a  news- 
paper cart  had  been  a  sorry  sight  to  him.  Frank  was 
too  good  for  Fleet  Street,  and- he  strongly  advised  him 
to  abandon  regular  journalism,  in  which  he  would  always 
be  the  slave  of  men  with  small  minds,  and  be  his  own 
master  as  an  essayist,  novelist,  playwright  and  historian, 
for  all  of  which  lines  of  literature  he  had  such  richly- 
endowed  qualities. 

Frank  in  spite  of  his  woe  was  obliged  to  smile  at  this 
exaggeration  of  his  talents,  but  he  shook  his  head  and  said 
that  he  had  no  desire  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise.  He 
had  already  experienced  the  life  of  a  freelance,  and  he 
had  found  it  a  Quixotic  game  of  tilting  at  windmills. 

Grattan  inquired  with  the  utmost  friendliness  into  the 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  409 

state  of  his  finances,  and  finding  that  Frank  had  only  a 
few  pounds  between  him  and  the  streets,  immediately 
pulled  out  a  cheque-book  and  a  stylographic  pen  and  de- 
manded to  know  how  much  he  would  like  to  go  on  with. 

"Look  here,  Grattan,"  said  Frank  rather  fiercely,  "if 
you  think  I'm  going  to  sponge  on  you  you're  jolly  well 
mistaken.  Put  that  book  in  your  pocket  and  leave  me  a 
little  self-respect,  for  heaven's  sake." 

Grattan  swore  a  number  of  lurid  oaths  and  called  him 
many  bad  names  on  account  of  his  haughtiness. 

"If  I  can't  lend  you  a  trifle  when  you're  down  on  your 
luck,"  he  said,  "you're  not  the  true  friend  I  always  took 
you  to  be.  Why,  man,  I  tell  you  it  will  be  a  kindness  to 
relieve  me  temporarily  of  some  of  this  filthy  lucre!  It 
will  all  go  in  wild  and  disgraceful  orgies  if  you  don't  take 
care  of  it.  Sure,  and  you  wouldn't  ruin  a  man's  soul  for 
the  sake  of  your  tuppenny-ha'penny  pride?" 

Frank  thrust  the  little  Irishman  into  a  chair,  took  his 
pipe  out  of  his  pocket,  and  poked  it  in  his  mouth,  ex- 
actly as  if  he  had  been  an  Aunt  Sally. 

"Have  some  of  my  'baccy,"  he  said,  "and  don't  talk 
skybosh." 

Nevertheless,  Grattan's  visits,  which  were  frequent 
and  at  all  sorts  of  odd  hours — for  sometimes  he  would 
do  a  devil's  tatoo  on  Frank's  door  before  he  was  out  of 
bed  in  the  morning,  and  at  other  times  sing  "Molly  Bawn" 
on  the  staircase  as  he  came  up  late  at  night — were  very 
cheering  to  a  man  who,  when  alone,  stayed  too  long  with 
his  elbows  on  the  table  and  his  head  in  his  hands  staring 
at  the  blank  paper  before  him  on  which  he  saw  dismal 
pictures.  At  times  he  resented  the  Irishman's  visits,  and 
was  inclined  to  damn  his  impertinence  for  intruding  so 
often.  For,  like  all  neuropaths  (and  Frank  at  this  time 
was  certainly  in  the  first  stages  of  neurasthenia),  he 
found  a  subtle  pleasure  in  brooding  over  his  own  wretch- 


410  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

edness.  It  is  only  now,  looking  back  upon  those  black 
days,  that  Frank  realises  all  that  Grattan  did  for  him, 
by  coming  with  indomitable  cheeriness  into  his  rooms  and 
dragging  him  out  into  the  streets  for  a  luncheon  at  a 
Soho  restaurant,  or  for  a  cup  of  tea  at  the  club. 

Margaret  Hubbard  was  another  cheerful  soul  who  was 
a  friend  in  need  to  some  of  those  colleagues  who  had 
given  her  the  nickname  of  "Mother."  She  had  the  same 
trouble  with  Katherine  as  Grattan  with  Frank,  for  Kath- 
erine's  highly-strung  temperament  had  suffered  more  than 
she  knew  at  the  time  of  the  crisis,  and  immediately  after- 
wards she  fell  into  a  kind  of  weakness  as  though  all  her 
strength  had  been  taken  from  her.  The  doctor  spoke 
very  seriously  about  the  first  stages  of  tuberculosis,  to 
which  Margaret  Hubbard  said  "Fiddlesticks!"  much  to 
the  astonishment  and  indignation  of  the  Harley  Street 
physician,  to  whom  Margaret  paid  two  guineas,  grudging- 
ly, for  what  seemed  to  her  words  of  extreme  stupidity. 
Perhaps  Margaret  was  right  when  she  said  that  it  was 
merely  a  case  of  "rundown  nerves."  Perhaps,  however, 
she  was  more  scared  by  the  doctor's  words  than  she  al- 
lowed herself  to  appear.  Frank  suspected  more  than 
once  that  she  had  been  weeping  in  secret,  but  if  that  were 
so  she  kept  her  tears  to  her  own  chamber,  and  to  Frank, 
Codrington,  Grattan  and  others — who  called  to  inquire 
after  Katherine  and  to  spend  an  hour  or  two  in  Shaftes- 
bury  Avenue  when  Katherine  became  a  little  stronger 
and  was  allowed  out  of  bed — she  had  always  a  serene  and 
smiling  face,  and  spoke  words  of  dauntless  courage. 

This  woman  was  stronger  in  misfortune  than  many  of 
the  men,  and  she  bullied  them  heartily  for  their  lack  of 
grit.  When  Frank  was  pessimistic  she  "pitched  into 
him,"  as  she  called  it,  until  he  began  to  see  things  in  a 
more  rosy  light,  and  to  believe  that  after  all  he  need  not 
be  so  wretched.  When  the  days  passed  and  Codrington 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  411 

was  still  without  work,  waiting,  like  Mr.  Micawber,  for 
something  to  turn  up,  she  stung  him  with  sarcasm  and 
desired  him  to  tell  her  how  long  he  would  keep  his  tailor 
at  bay,  and  whether  he  thought  that  God  would  work  a 
special  miracle  for  him  and  pay  his  debts. 

"It  is  disgraceful,"  she  said  one  night  to  both  Codring- 
ton  and  Frank.  "You  young  men  have  no  self-respect. 
If  you  can't  get  on  to  another  paper  just  yet,  why  don't 
you  write  novels,  or  plays,  or  stories  for  the  Family  Her- 
old  Supplement,  or  penny  dreadfuls,  or  advertisements 
for  Pink  Pills?  Something — anything  rather  than  be- 
moaning your  fate.  Do  you  know  what  I  am  doing  to 
keep  my  end  up?" 

"No,"  said  Codrington,  "something  wonderful,  I  am 
sure.  Is  it  a  secret?" 

"A  secret  ?  No.  I  am  typing  a  work  on  The  Relation 
of  Vermin  to  the  Distribution  of  Bubonic  Plague.'  Nine- 
pence  a  thousand  is  my  rate  of  pay,  and  the  learned  pro- 
fessor wants  me  to  do  it  for  sixpence,  but  I  told  him 
I  would  rather  starve  than  be  a  blackleg.  I  am  getting 
quite  fascinated  in  the  physiology  of  fleas.  I  had  no  idea 
they  were  such  remarkable  creatures." 

Codrington  shuddered  and  expressed  the  deepest  sym- 
pathy with  Margaret  Hubbard  for  having  to  do  such  ter- 
rible work,  which  might  blunt  her  beautiful  sensibilities. 
But  she  cut  him  short  by  saying  that  she  was  proud  and 
happy  to  be  earning  a  little  money  in  those  hard  times, 
and  as  for  her  "beautiful  sensibilities,"  she  would  have 
him  know  that  she  did  not  belong  to  the  period  of  Jane 
Austen's  young  women. 

These  words  had  an  effect  upon  both  the  men  to  whom 
they  were  spoken.  They  made  Frank  feel  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  himself,  and  that  night,  in  order  to  prove  to 
Margaret  Hubbard  that  he  was  at  least  trying  "to  keep 
his  end  up,"  he  went  back  and  finished  the  last  chapter 


412  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

of  that  queer,  unconventional,  auto-biographical  romance 
Which  had  interested  him  exceedingly  for  several  weeks 
and  then  had  lain  unfinished,  accumulating  dust  on  his 
desk.  He  packed  up  the  manuscript  in  brown  paper  and 
sent  it  by  post  to  Margaret  Hubbard  with  a  rather  self- 
conscious,  apologetic  note,  begging  her  to  burn  it  if  it 
bored  her,  or  to  advise  him  where  to  send  it  if  she  thought 
it  was  a  little  bit  interesting.  Above  all  things,  he  trusted 
to  her  honour  not  to  show  it  to  Katherine,  because  she 
would  certainly  find  it  an  inexhaustible  subject  for  satire. 

Katherine  herself  had  spoken  words  to  him  that  day 
which  had  made  him  desperately  anxious  to  get  some 
kind  of  work  to  do.  He  had  brought  her  some  flowers, 
and  they  had  been  alone  together  for  an  hour  or  two 
while  Margaret  Hubbard  was  busily  typing  herself  tired 
in  the  next  room. 

Katherine  was  sitting  up  in  a  high-backed,  tapestried 
chair,  and  she  looked  very  beautiful,  in  Frank's  eyes,  with 
her  head  leaning  back  on  a  cushion,  and  her  hands,  rather 
frail  and  transparent,  grasping  the  arms  of  the  chair. 

"Frank,"  she  said,  suddenly,  after  they  had  been  talking 
about  all  that  was  being  suffered  by  their  poor  colleagues 
who  were  still  without  work,  "why  don't  you  make  haste 
and  get  rich  ?" 

"Ah!"  said  Frank,  smiling  woefully.    "Why,  indeed?" 

Then  he  said  after  a  pause,  "What  would  you  have  me 
do  if  I  were  in  that  enviable  position  ?" 

"You  needn't  be  so  very  rich,"  she  said.  "But  if  you 
had  a  little  money  to  play  about  with,  shall  I  tell  you  what 
I  would  like  you  to  do?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  drawing  his  chair  nearer,  and  bending 
towards  her.  "Yes." 

"I  would  like  you  to  take  me  away,  a  long  way  from 
here — to  the  Cornish  coast,  I  think,  or  to  some  place 
where  the  sea  is,  and  where  there  are  nice  little  old  cot- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  413 

tages  with  thatched  roofs,  and  with  flowers  in  the  gardens, 
and  with  old  people  sunning  themselves,  and  children  play- 
ing, and  I  think  a  hill  or  two  somewhere  in  the  back- 
ground. I  should  like  to  get  away  from  London  for  a 
while." 

"And  you  would  like  me  to  go  with  you  ?"  said  Frank 
eagerly,  and  as  joyfully  as  though  the  money  were  in  his 
pocket  to  carry  out  this  blessed  notion. 

"If  you  were  very  nice  to  me,"  she  said. 

"Katherine!"  said  Frank,  putting  his  hand  on  hers. 
"That  is  a  divine  dream  I"  Then  he  said  almost  in  an- 
guish, "Oh,  Lord,  how  can  I  make  it  come  true!" 

"Write  something  good  and  brilliant,"  said  Katherine. 
"You  can  do  it  if  any  one  can." 

"You  are  like  Grattan,"  said  Frank,  "who  tries  to  buck 
me  up  by  calling  me  a  universal  genius." 

"Oh,  not  universal,"  said  Katherine,  who  was  always 
candid.  "But  I  think  you  might  work  out  a  comer  for 
yourself.  That  imagination  of  yours  must  surely  have  a 
little  kingdom  of  its  own." 

These  words,  which  came  so  soon  after  Margaret's 
stimulating  bullying,  sent  Frank  home  with  a  new  deter- 
mination to  conquer  his  deadly  depression  and  play  the 
man.  The  first  fruit  of  his  resolution  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  finish  his  story  and  send  it  to  Margaret  Hubbard. 
His  next  struggle  over  his  painful  irresolution  and  morbid 
inactivity  was  to  walk  to  Fleet  Street  (he  economised  in 
'bus  fares)  and  join  the  rendezvous  of  his  old  colleagues 
in  the  smoking-room  of  the  wine  tavern  where  they 
dropped  in  day  by  day  to  compare  notes,  to  commiserate 
each  other  in  a  pleasurable,  melancholy  way,  to  report 
progress  or  failure  in  their  endeavours  to  obtain  new  jobs 
and  to  envy  the  amazing  good  fortune  of  those  who  had 
found  new  spheres  of  activity.  It  occurred  to  Frank, 
truely  enough,  that  only  in  the  society  of  his  fellows 


414  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

would  he  hear  the  gossip  of  journalism  and  of  any  pos- 
sible openings  in  which  he  might  have  a  chance  of  getting 
a  place. 

There  was  something  rather  moving  and  rather  good 
in  this  society  of  comrades  in  misfortune.  The  public 
which  they  had  served  so  faithfully — for,  after  all,  jour- 
nalists are  not  the  least  important  of  public  servants — 
did  not  trouble  about  them,  did  not  even  know  their 
names.  Nobody  opened  a  public  subscription  for  these 
shipwrecked  mariners  of  Fleet  Street,  though  they  had 
kept  the  flag  flying  while  the  good  ship  was  sinking  and 
done  "Birkenhead  drill"  until  the  lights  went  out.  But 
they  still  clung  to  their  old  comradeship  on  the  desert 
island  of  life  where  there  were  precious  few  bread-trees 
and  no  milk  or  honey.  Unlike  the  Swiss  Family  Robin- 
son they  did  not  discover  all  kinds  of  precious  treasures 
washed  up  by  the  kindly  waves. 

But,  at  least,  they  did  not  indulge  like  some  ship- 
wrecked mariners  in  cannibalism,  and  most  of  them  were 
eager  to  do  a  good  turn  to  a  colleague  provided  they 
would  not  thereby  cut  their  own  throats.  In  a  nation 
of  individualists  the  first  person  singular  was  bound  to 
be  of  supreme  importance,  but  to  the  honour  of  the  staff, 
which  called  itself  "late  of  the  Rag"  it  must  be  said  that 
they  developed  a  kindly  altruism  in  misfortune. 

For  instance,  when  Phillimore  had  applied  for  an  edi- 
torial appointment  which,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  had 
just  become  vacant  owing  to  the  death  of  its  previous 
holder,  at  a  ripe  old  age  (for  Fleet  Street)  of  fifty-seven, 
Phillimore,  who  was  rejected  on  account  of  his  delicate 
health,  immediately  passed  the  word  round  to  his  col- 
leagues, and  no  one  was  more  genuine  in  his  congratula- 
tions than  he  when  the  place  was  given  to  one  of  the  sub- 
editors of  the  old  paper,  who  kept  a  large  family  at  Brix- 
ton  and  an  old  mother  and  father  in  a  Perthshire  cottage. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  415 

Phillimore,  who  had  only  a  wife  and  three  beautiful  chil- 
dren, consoled  himself  for  being  turned  down  by  the 
thought  that  a  more  needy  man  had  got  the  luck.  At 
the  same  time  Phillimore  was  badly  broken  up,  and  when 
Luttrell  found  him  sitting  in  the  smoking-room  with  half- 
a-dozen  of  his  old  colleagues,  the  former  literary  editor 
of  the  Rag  was  looking  very  white  and  woebegone. 

In  the  downfall,  distinctions  of  rank  had  been  abol- 
ished, and  noble  editors  were  not  above  accepting  a  drink 
from  junior  reporters,  or  leader-writers  from  "subs." 
whom  they  had  snubbed  in  office.  Perhaps  it  would  have 
been  wiser  if  so  many  drinks  had  not  been  offered  all 
round.  But  it  was  on  the  principle  of  taking  in  each 
other's  washing  like  the  old  French  emigres  in  England, 
and  although  it  came  to  the  same  thing  in  the  long  run,  it 
was  pleasant  for  a  fellow  to  say,  "Have  a  drink,  old 
man,"  or  "Come  and  have  a  bite  with  me,  old  chap ;  it  is 
my  shout  to-day/'  knowing  full  well  that  the  compliment 
would  be  returned. 

As  the  days  passed,  and  the  weeks,  the  assembly  be- 
came smaller.  In  spite  of  the  congested  condition  of 
Fleet  Street,  some  of  the  men  actually  did  find  new 
places.  Brandon,  for  instance,  had  been  quickly  snapped 
up  by  a  halfpenny  paper,  which  had  watched  his  criminal 
investigation  work  with  admiration.  Birkenshaw,  the 
little  sporting  editor,  had  become  an  exalted  being  in 
charge  of  the  greatest  sporting  page  in  any  newspaper  in 
England.  Quin,  the  dramatic  critic,  had  set  up  a  dra- 
matic agency  and  was  doing  a  big  business  in  lovely  ladies. 
Vicary,  the  news-editor,  had  walked  from  one  side  of 
Fleet  Street  to  the  other,  and  had  hung  up  his  hat  in 
an  office  which  had  long  endeavoured  to  seduce  him  from 
the  now  defunct  paper  by  offers  of  a  prodigious  salary. 
Vicary  made  use  of  his  good  fortune  in  the  noblest  way 
by  bringing  in  several  of  his  old  subordinates,  which  un- 


416  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

fortunately  brought  on  to  the  street  four  or  five  men  who 
had  grown  old  on  the  staff  of  the  other  paper.  He  was  no 
doubt  justified  in  calling  them  deadheads,  but  the  tragedy 
of  a  deadhead  is  not  less  tragic. 

Silas  Bellamy  had  done  his  best  for  his  men,  and  had 
written  round  to  many  editors  recommending  this  man 
or  that  for  an  appointment.  But  whether  it  was  that  an 
editor  out  of  office  is  little  better  than  a  dead  donkey,  or 
whether  there  was  a  cruel  prejudice  against  men  who  had 
been  associated  with  a  failure,  the  truth  is,  that  in  only 
a  few  cases  did  Bellamy's  recommendations  bear  fruit. 
Frank  himself  received,  a  few  days  after  Margaret  Hub- 
bard's  lecture,  the  kindest  note  from  Bellamy  telling  him 
to  go  round  to  the  office  of  an  illustrated  weekly  paper, 
where  the  proprietor  would  be  pleased  to  see  him.  Frank 
knew  the  paper,  though  he  had  never  met  the  proprietor. 
It  was  made  up  almost  entirely  of  trivial  little  paragraphs 
of  social  and  theatrical  gossip,  with  full-page  photographs 
of  notable  men  and  women  and  notorious  actresses.  It 
occurred  to  him  on  the  way  that  this  kind  of  work  would 
be  more  uncongenial  than  reporting,  and  far  more  diffi- 
cult to  a  man  like  himself,  utterly  ignorant  of  London 
society  and  the  lovely  ladies  of  the  musical  comedies. 
But  he  kept  the  appointment  and  had  a  miserable  half- 
hour  with  a  middle-aged  gentleman  of  Jewish  appearance 
and  Saxon  name,  with  oily  curls  all  over  his  head,  who 
blinked  at  him  with  inquisitive  little  eyes  and  seemed  more 
anxious  to  know  the  secret  history  of  the  dead  paper, 
the  cause  of  its  downfall,  and  the  salary  of  its  editor, 
than  to  discover  the  qualifications  of  Frank  Luttrell  for 
the  position  of  sub-editor  on  his  own  weekly  paper.  But 
during  the  last  five  minutes,  after  Frank  had  disap- 
pointed him  by  professing  (what  was  almost  the  truth) 
a  blank  ignorance  of  these  details,  the  gentleman  with 
the  greasy  curls  cross-examined  him  sharply  and  ag- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  417 

gressively  about  his  own  work  and  achievements,  and 
then  rising  and  shaking  hands  with  him  said  that  he  was 
convinced  that  Luttrell  was  too  good  for  the  job. 

Frank  went  out  into  the  street  profoundly  relieved  that 
this  at  least  would  not  be  his  shelter  from  starvation. 
Better  to  starve  than  to  be  the  slave  of  such  a  task-master. 
So  he  thought  then  with  a  pride  that  was  destined  to  be 
humbled.  It  is  so  easy  to  say  "better  to  starve"  when 
there  is  still  a  jingling  guinea  or  two  to  change  into  rump 
steak  and  rolls  and  butter. 

But  when  four  more  weeks  had  passed  and  he  was  still 
without  work,  and  when  he  had  to  go  round  in  a  hurry 
to  Grattan's  rooms  in  Soho  to  borrow  the  five-pound  note 
which  he  had  refused  so  scornfully  some  time  ago,  he  was 
desperately  sincere  in  saying  that  he  would  be  thankful 
for  thirty  shillings  as  a  tram-conductor.  Grattan  laughed 
hilariously  at  his«abject  despair,  and  told  him  many  thrill- 
ing tales  of  the  way  in  which  he  had  been  stranded  with- 
out money  in  half  the  capitals  of  Europe.  Such  experi- 
ences had  not  given  him  a  wrinkle  on  his  forehead.  They 
had  only  braced  him  up  and  given  him  the  joy  of  adven- 
ture. When  it  had  been  quite  essential  to  his  bodily  health 
to  get  a  little  ready  money  he  had  always  found  a  way, 
and  his  pen  had  always  responded  to  the  call.  He  lent 
Frank  the  five  pounds  in  a  deliciously  crinkly  note,  and 
then,  without  much  discussion  on  the  subject,  but  taking 
command  of  the  situation  in  a  masterful  way,  sent  round 
a  hand-cart  to  Staple  Inn,  shifted  Frank's  private  belong- 
ings into  it — his  books,  pictures,  papers,  pipes,  and  clothes 
— and  had  them  taken  round  to  Newport  Buildings,  Soho. 

"You're  coming  to  stay  with  me  for  a  while,  my  boy," 
he  said.  "I  know  it  is  delightful  to  live  like  an  aristocrat 
in  rooms  once  inhabited  by  William  the  Conqueror  or 
Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  but  you  can't  afford  such  luxuries 
at  the  present  time.  Besides,  it  will  be  a  great  joy  to 


418  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

me  to  have  your  company,  and  I'm  pandering  to  my  own 
selfishness.  .  .  .  Oh,  of  course,  you  will  have  to  pay  your 
share,  but  I  give  my  customers  credit." 

Grattan  at  this  time  was  doing  a  series  of  startling  arti- 
cles on  "The  Anarchist  Haunts  of  Europe"  for  an  Ameri- 
can paper  which  paid  him  the  princely  price  of  ten  pounds 
an  article.  He  wrote  them  as  a  rule  in  bed  between  ten 
and  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  afterwards  went  out 
on  visits  to  clubs  ranging  from  the  Garibaldian  in  the 
Italian  quarter  to  the  Bath  Club  in  Dover  Street,  where 
he  met  English  peers,  or  exiled  foreigners,  or  Fleet  Street 
journalists,  or  attaches  of  foreign  embassies  and  other 
people  of  high  and  low  rank,  who  were  delighted  to  give 
him  a  luncheon  in  return  for  the  boon  of  his  company 
and  conversation.  Frank  therefore  did  not  see  much  of 
him  although  he  shared  his  rooms,  but  whenever  Grattan 
came  home  his  cheeriness  and  almost  womanly  kindness — 
he  even  went  so  far  as  to  black  Frank's  boots  one  morn- 
ing— had  an  invigorating  effect  upon  his  "parlour-board- 
er." Frank  actually  succeeded  in  writing  some  light  arti- 
cles which  were  accepted  in  two  of  the  magazines,  and 
in  spite  of  Grattan's  almost  violent  protests  handed  over 
the  cheques  received  for  them  as  part  payment  for  board 
and  lodging.  This  had  a  good  effect  in  restoring  his 
self-respect,  and  in  giving  him  a  little  self-confidence. 
But  he  was  still  without  any  immediate,  or  indeed  any  re- 
mote, prospect  of  getting  back  regularly  into  Fleet  Street, 
and  as  the  days  passed  he  tried  to  face  as  bravely  as  he 
could  the  painful  fact  that  he  would  have  to  find  some 
other  line  of  work.  Perhaps  after  all  he  would  have  to 
go  back  to  school-mastering. 

Then  a  wonderful  thing  happened  to  him. 

One  morning  he  received  a  note  from  Margaret  Hub- 
bard,  enclosing  a  type-written  letter. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  419 

DEAR  FRANK  (wrote  Margaret), 

"It  is  nearly  two  months  since  you  sent  me  that  manu- 
script called  Richard  Dream-a-Day.  I  dare  say  you  have 
wondered  why  I  have  been  such  an  unconscionable  time 
in  reading  it,  and  of  course  with  your  usual  diffidence  you 
have  not  said  a  word  to  me  about  it.  (I  have  often  seen 
the  question  trembling  on  your  lips,  but,  oh  no,  it  was 
never  spoken!)  Well,  Mr.  Dick  Dream-a-Day,  because, 
of  course,  it  is  yourself  all  the  time,  I  now  write  to  tell 
you  that  I  read  it  at  one  sitting.  It  took  me  from  three 
in  the  afternoon  until  two  in  the  morning,  with  inter- 
vals for  refreshment  and  odds  and  ends,  such  as  tucking 
up  Katherine  in  bed.  When  I  finished  it  I  found  my  eyes 
were*  all  wet  with  tears,  and  I  haven't  cried  over  a  book 
for  years.  My  dear  Frank,  my  dear  boy,  you  have  writ- 
ten a  beautiful  thing.  It  is  all  true  and  all  charming, 
and  all  your  good,  simple,  nice,  kind  self.  If  I  were  not 
in  love  with  some  one  else  I  should  be  very  much  in 
love  with  you,  after  reading  this.  Indeed,  I  am  very 
much  in  love  with  you,  and  I  am  sure  the  somebody  else 
will  not  mind. 

"Well,  now  I  must  confess  to  a  little  plot.  I  did  not 
keep  that  manuscript  mouldering  in  my  drawer.  I  sent 
it  off  with  a  letter — a  hot  one,  I  can  tell  you,  and  palpitat- 
ing with  emotion,  as  we  journalists  say — to  a  man  who 
was  once  a  friend  of  mine  and  is  now  a  publisher — there- 
fore of  course  no  longer  my  friend.  I  told  him  that  if  he 
did  not  make  you  a  good  offer  for  the  work  he  would  be  a 
bigger  fool  than  I  knew  him  to  be.  Enclosed  is  his  an- 
swer. The  wretch  has  kept  me  waiting  six  weeks  for  it. 
It  is  of  course  a  monstrously  absurd  price  he  names — in 
fact,  the  fellow  is  a  criminal — but  in  this  world  there  are 
harrows  and  toads  under  them.  Publishers  are  the  har- 
rows. Anyhow,  in  the  circumstances,  you  may  care  to 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

accept.    I  am  sure  the  book  will  create  a  sensation,  and 
then  you  can  get  better  terms  next  time. 

"Yours,  with  the  deepest  admiration, 

"MARGARET  HUBBARD." 

The  enclosed  letter  was  from  the  publisher,  who  wrote 
as  follows — 

"My  DEAR  MOTHER  HUBBARD  (Will  you  forgive  me  for 
using  the  old  name?) — 

"I  have  read  the  manuscript  called  Richard  Dream-a- 
Day  by  your  friend  Mr.  Francis  Luttrell,  and  I  have 
also  obtained  reports  upon  it  from  two  of  my  readers. 
We  concur  in  thinking  that,  in  spite  of  certain  weaknesses 
of  construction  and  a  somewhat  emotional  style,  the 
story  has  distinct  merits  and  shows  real  promise.  The 
novel  market  is  very  bad  just  now,  and  first  novels  have 
but  a  poor  chance.  I  am,  however,  willing  to  offer  Mr. 
Luttrell  £50  (Fifty  Pounds)  on  account  of  a  ten  per 
cent,  royalty  and  provided  he  gives  us  the  offer  of  his 
next  two  novels  on  terms  to  be  arranged  between  us. 
I  think  it  is  due  to  me,  and  to  you,  to  say  that  this  decision 
is  influenced  by  your  own  recommendation,  and  by  that 
very  pleasant  friendship  which  is  still  so  delightful  a 
memory  to 

"Yours  very  sincerely, 

"JOHN  BURLINGTON. 

"PS. — In  view  of  what  you  tell  me,  I  shall  be  willing 
to  pay  the  £50  on  the  completion  of  the  agreement/' 

To  Frank  Luttrell  these  letters  were  astounding  and 
full  of  joy.  It  seemed  to  him  that  Margaret  Hubbard 
had  worked  a  miracle  in  his  favour.  For  a  little  while  he 
read  the  words  on  those  pieces  of  notepaper  again  and 
again.  He  felt  intoxicated,  almost  drunk  with  delight. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  421 

He  yelled  out  to  Grattan  who  was  in  his  bedroom,  and 
the  Irishman,  coming  in  hastily,  dressed  in  a  ragged  old 
robe  of  blue  silk  which  had  once  belonged  to  a  Chinese 
mandarin,  found  him  standing  in  front  of  the  fire-place 
with  a  flushed  face  and  burning  eyes. 

"Grattan!"  he  said,  thrusting  the  letters  into  his 
friend's  hands,  "Grattan,  read!  Oh,  it  is  too  good!  It 
is  too  good !" 

Then  he  sat  down  in  a  chair,  and  put  his  face  in  his 
hands  and  burst  into  tears. 

It  was  very  stupid  of  him,  of  course,  very  weak  and 
womanish,  but  the  fellow  had  been  feeding  on  despair 
for  three  months,  and  this  gift  of  success  and  hope,  com- 
ing so  suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  had  been  too  much  for 
him. 

Fifty  pounds  was  not  a  prodigious  sum.  It  would  not 
keep  him  in  the  lap  of  luxury  for  more  than  a  few 
months.  But  to  Luttrell,  who  since  the  death  of  the 
paper  had  not  earned  a  tenth  of  that  sum,  it  seemed  riches 
beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice.  But  it  meant  more  than 
that.  It  gave  him,  in  addition  to  the  boundless  possibili- 
ties of  that  ten  per  cent,  royalty  (Luttrell  was  innocent 
of  publishers'  accounts  and  of  the  average  sale  of  the 
average  novel),  the  promise  of  a  literary  career  outside 
Fleet  Street  in  which  he  had  been,  by  bad  luck,  a  failure. 
John  Burlington  had  bound  him  to  submit  his  next  two 
novels,  "on  terms  that  should  be  arranged  between  them." 
That  in  itself  was  a  promise  of  great  things.  One  of  the 
big  London  publishers  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  bind 
him  over  to  that  clause  in  the  agreement.  It  was  a  proof 
that  he  believed  in  the  future  of  the  author  of  Richard 
Dream-a-Day.  And  Frank  Luttrell,  whom  Margaret 
Hubbard  called  Dick  Dream-a-Day  in  her  letter,  proved 
his  right  to  the  nick-name. 

Talking  it  over  with  Grattan,  who  was  almost  as  joyful 


422  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

as  Frank  himself  and  much  more  noisy  in  the  expression 
of  his  joy,  Frank  mentioned  one  phrase  of  the  letter 
which  had  perplexed  him. 

"What  does  Mother  Hubbard  mean  by  saying  that  she 
is  in  love  with  somebody  else?" 
•  "Ah !"  said  Grattan  thoughtfully,  "I  wonder/' 

It  was  two  weeks  afterwards  that  Frank  learnt  the 
meaning  of  that  phrase.  The  interpretation  was  given 
to  him  on  the  night  when  he  received  the  cheque  for  fifty 
pounds  from  his  publisher,  and  when  he  went  round  to 
the  flat  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue  with  a  bunch  of  white 
flowers,  just  as  in  the  old  days  before  the  death  of  the 
paper.  The  door  was  opened  by  the  middle-aged  woman 
who  looked  after  the  flat.  In  answer  to  his  question  she 
said  that  Miss  Katherine  was  "hout,"  but  that  Miss  Mar- 
garet was  in  the  "droring  room"  with  Mr.  Grattan.  Frank 
was  surprised  to  hear  that  Grattan  was  there.  He  had 
left  Soho  two  hours  ago  without  saying  that  he  was  on  his 
way  to  Shaftesbury  Avenue. 

Frank  strode  through  the  passage  as  a  privileged  visitor 
and  went  into  the  room  without  being  announced.  But 
he  stopped  short  at  the  door  with  a  little  ejaculation  of 
amazement.  Grattan  was  in  a  chair  by  the  fireside,  and 
Margaret  Hubbard  was  sitting  on  the  floor  with  her  head 
on  his  knees. 

"Come  in,  Frank,"  said  Margaret  quietly. 

"Am  I  in  the  way?"  said  Frank,  feeling  strangely  em- 
barrassed. 

Margaret  got  up  and  came  towards  him.  Her  face 
was  flushed  with  a  warm  colour,  and  there  was  a  beautiful 
light  in  her  eyes. 

"You  will  never  be  in  the  way,  when  Edmund  Grat- 
tan and  I  sit  by  the  fireside,"  she  said.  Then  she  stretched 
out  her  hands,  and  said,  "Frank,  we  will  take  you  into 
our  little  secret.  Not  even  Katherine  knows,  but  you 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  423 

shall  know.  .  .  .  Edmund  Grattan  and  I  are  going  to  be 
married." 

"Great  Scott !"  said  Frank  boyishly.  "You  don't  mean 
to  say  so !" 

Margaret  laughed  at  him,  a  sweet  low,  joyous  laugh. 

"It  is  surprising,  isn't  it?  ...  Every  one  and  myself 
thought  I  should  live  and  die  an  old  maid.  .  .  .  But,  oh, 
I  am  so  glad,  Frank.  I  did  so  hate  loneliness  and  lack 
of  love." 

She  broke  down  a  little  and  laughed  through  tears, 
and  said,  "The  little  Irishman  has  taken  pity  on  me." 

Frank  could  say  nothing  but  "Mother  Hubbard! 
Mother  Hubbard !"  in  a  husky  voice,  and  then  he  kissed 
her  hand,  and  afterwards  went  over  to  Grattan,  who  was 
looking  like  a  school-boy,  caught  in  the  act  of  stealing 
apples,  and  grasped  both  his  hands,  and  said,  "I  can 
hardly  believe  it.  It  is  like  a  fairy-tale !  Anyhow,  thank 
God  for  it.  You  and  Mother  Hubbard  will  be  a  perfect 
pair." 

He  said  other  foolish  things  not  knowing  what  he  was 
saying,  but  his  excitement  and  gladness  were  pleasing  to 
those  two  lovers,  who  spoke  of  themselves  as  "old 
fogeys." 

Later  on  in  the  evening  Grattan  made  Frank's  pulse 
beat  by  saying,  "We'll  have  a  double  marriage,  my  boy — 
Mother  Hubbard  and  I,  and  you  and  Katherine;  and  all 
the  boys  and  girls  of  Fleet  Street  shall  come  to  our  wed- 
ding and  throw  old  shoes  at  us." 

"By  Jove,"  said  Frank,  "that  would  be  pretty  "good, 
wouldn't  it  ?" 

Then  he  told  them  of  a  little  plan  that  had  come  into 
his  head  a  day  or  two  ago,  and  he  asked  them  whether 
they  thought  it  would  be  pleasing  to  Katherine.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  it  was  no  use  hanging  round  Fleet  Street  any 
longer.  The  street  did  not  want  him.  It  had  no  use  for 


424  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

him.  But  away  down  in  the  country  there  was  an  old 
Rectory  with  heaps  of  spare  room,  and  a  father  and 
mother  who  were  always  writing  to  him  to  come  back. 
The  Rectory  was  in  the  heart  of  Somersetshire,  in  the 
most  lovely  country,  and  the  garden  was  full  of  flowers. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  if  Katherine  would  marry  him,  and 
share  the  old  home  which  would  be  rent  free  to  them, 
they  could  be  as  happy  as  birds.  He  would  write  his 
novels  and  anything  else  that  came  into  his  head,  and 
Katherine  could  write  special  articles,  or  nothing  at  all 
if  she  felt  inclined  to  drop  her  pen  and  take  to  gardening. 
And  with  even  the  smallest  income  they  would  be  quite 
comfortable,  and  live  quietly,  and  enjoy  peace  and  liberty. 
.  .  .  How  did  the  notion  strike  them? 

Margaret  said  the  notion  struck  her  famously.  It 
would  be  the  best  thing  in  the  world  for  Katherine,  and 
quite  the  best  thing  for  Frank.  They  would  get  away 
from  the  toil  and  turmoil  of  Fleet  Street,  and  have  elbow- 
room  for  their  two  little  white  souls. 

Frank  did  not  say  anything  on  the  subject  to  Katherine 
that  night  when  she  came  home  from  a  visit  to  Bellamy 
and  his  wife.  She  seemed  rather  excited  by  the  visit  to 
"the  Chief,"  as  they  used  to  call  him,  and  when  Mother 
Hubbard  told  her  the  great  secret  about  Edmund  Grattan 
she  flung  her  arms  round  the  woman  who  had  been  more 
than  a  sister  to  her,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  evening  she 
was  so  absorbed  in  the  idea  of  a  married  Mother  Hubbard 
and  of  a  Papa  Grattan  that  Frank  did  not  have  a  little 
ghost  of  a  chance  to  put  forward  his  own  idea. 

That  chance  came  on  the  following  day  when  Edmund 
Grattan  took  Margaret  to  the  Zoo,  to  do  a  little  courting, 
as  he  called  it  in  his  whimsical  way.  It  seemed  to  Frank 
highly  characteristic  of  both  these  good  people  that  they 
should  choose  such  a  place  for  such  a  purpose.  He  could 
imagine  that  afternoon's  "courting."  Grattan  would  cer- 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  425 

tainly  buy  buns  for  the  bears,  and  sprats  for  the  sea- 
lions,  and  he  would  moralise  in  the  monkey-house,  and 
Margaret  and  he  would  enjoy  themselves  in  a  quiet  way 
as  if  they  were  children  out  for  a  holiday.  He  afterwards 
learnt  that  his  imagining  had  not  been  wrong,  for  they 
had  done  all  these  things,  and  had  even  gone  for  a  ride  on 
the  elephant,  hand  in  hand. 

Their  absence  left  him  alone  with  Katherine.  He  no- 
ticed that  she  was  looking  unusually  well  and  seemed 
in  brighter  spirits  than  she  had  shown  since  the  death 
of  the  paper.  They  had  a  merry  and  delightful  time 
toasting  tea-cakes  together,  both  down  on  their  knees 
before  the  drawing-room  fire  with  their  heads  close  to- 
gether, and  afterwards,  when  they  came  to  eat  the  cakes, 
Frank  was  careful  to  hide  the  burnt  sides  which  had  un- 
fortunately gone  against  the  bars  while  he  was  watching 
how  beautiful  Katherine's  face  was  in  the  ruddy  firelight. 
But  Katherine  detected  these  secret  sins,  and  as  a  punish- 
ment made  him  eat  the  results  of  his  own  carelessness. 
She  said  it  would  have  been  an  admirable  punishment  to 
King  Alfred.  Afterwards  they  cleared  away  the  tea-, 
things  and  washed  them  up,  because  the  old  woman  had 
got  a  day  off,  and  this  duty  seemed  to  Frank  a  foretaste 
of  the  joys  of  domesticity  with  Katherine  to  which  he 
looked  forward  as  he  might  to  heaven,  had  he  been  more 
pious  than  he  was. 

It  was  afterwards  in  the  drawing-room,  when  the  blinds 
had  been  drawn  and  the  lamp  turned  up,  that  Frank  said 
what  he  had  been  longing  to  say.  Katherine  gave  him 
the  opening  by  talking  of  his  novel,  which  she  had  just 
read  in  proof  form — the  publisher  had  been  generously 
quick  in  getting  it  into  type — and  admired  with  an  en- 
thusiasm as  warm  as  that  of  Margaret,  who  had  been  its 
fairy  godmother. 

"When  are  you  going  to  write  the  next?"  she  asked. 


426  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

And  Frank,  after  a  short  pause,  said,  "Pretty  soon,  I 
think,  if  you  will  help  me,  Katherine." 

She  raised  her  eyebrows  a  little,  and  laughed  and  said, 
"I?  Why,  what  can  I  do  to  help  you,  Frank?" 

He  said  that  she  could  do  everything;  and  then,  ner- 
vously at  first,  but  afterwards  glowing  with  enthusiasm 
for  what  was  his  brightest  dream,  put  forward  that 
scheme  which  he  had  outlined  to  Margaret  and  Grattan. 
He  had  often  described  his  own  home  to  Katherine  and 
Margaret,  but  never  before  with  such  tenderness  and  elo- 
quence. He  told  her  of  the  garden  with  its  broad,  smooth 
lawn,  with  the  old  beach-tree  in  the  middle,  and  of  the 
winding  paths  that  went  through  the  little  wood  at  the 
bottom,  which  his  father  called  the  "arboretum,"  and  of 
the  flower-beds  on  the  sunny  side  of  the  house,  from 
which  a  fragrant  scent  came  through  the  open  windows. 
Beyond  the  lawn  were  hayfields,  and  then  a  yard-wide 
stream,  and  then,  stretching  away  into  a  purple  distance,  a 
sweep  of  rising  ground,  girdled  by  high  woods  which 
were  caught  on  fire  by  the  sun  in  the  afternoons.  The 
village  was  a  dear  old  place  too,  with  little  thatched  cot- 
tages built  of  yellow  stone  two  and  three  centuries  ago, 
and  with  a  farm-house  much  older,  and  barns  which  had 
stored  grain  under  their  timbered  roofs  when  Elizabeth 
was  queen.  Katherine  would  revel  in  all  this.  It  would 
be  a  change  from  Fleet  Street!  And  there  in  the  Rec- 
tory was  his  quiet  old  father,  who  would  treat  her  with 
his  exquisite,  old-fashioned  courtesy,  though  he  would  be 
very  shy  of  her  at  first — and  his  mother,  who  was  still 
almost  young,  and  who  would  take  her  to  her  heart  at  first 
sight,  and  be  mother  and  sister  and  servant  to  her;  for 
her  great  pleasure  was  to  wait  upon  other  people,  and  to 
mend  or  make  their  clothes,  and  to  cook  dainty  things, 
and  in  her  quiet,  "unfussy"  way  to  give  them  every  com- 
fort in  the  house.  Frank  would  love  to  see  Katherine 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  427 

and  his  mother  together.  They  would  be  good  friends, 
and  she  would  not  be  dull  while  he  pegged  away  at  his 
novels  and  other  literary  work,  and  earned  an  income 
which,  in  the  country,  would  keep  them  out  of  poverty. 

"Katherine,"  said  Frank.  "How  does  the  idea  strike 
you?" 

While  he  had  been  speaking  she  had  sat  with  her  head 
slightly  turned  away  from  him,  with  her  pointed  chin 
dug  into  the  palm  of  her  hand,  and  with  her  eyes  gazing 
thoughtfully  into  the  fire.  She  listened  to  him  quietly 
and  without  interruption — his  words  flowed  from  his  lips 
— and  when  he  finished  she  gave  a  little  quivering  sigh, 
but  otherwise  was  silent. 

"It  would  be  an  idyll,"  said  Frank.  "What  do  you  say 
to  it?" 

When  she  turned  her  head  and  looked  up  into  his  face 
he  saw  that  her  eyes  were  moist  with  tears. 

"Frank,"  she  sajd,  "you  make  me  feel  a  very  wicked 
woman." 

He  threw  his  head  back  and  laughed,  but  his  eyes  had  a 
scared  look  in  them.  He  was  rather  frightened  by 
Katherine's  queer  gravity. 

"No,  don't  laugh,"  she  said  quickly ;  "I  mean  it." 

"What  do  you  mean?  What  has  my  idea  got  to  do 
with  your  alarming  wickedness  ?" 

He  spoke  lightly,  but  he  felt  chilled.  His  words  had 
not  made  Katherine's  eyes  dance  with  that  gladness  which 
he  had  hoped  to  see  in  them. 

"My  poor  Frank,"  said  Katherine,  "you  think  I  am  jest- 
ing. .  .  .  Oh,  I  wish  it  were  nothing  but  a  jest!  When 
you  were  speaking  just  now,  making  up  that  beautiful 
fairy-story  of  me  and  you  in  the  quiet  country,  I  won- 
dered for  a  little  while  whether  I  could  make  it  come 
true." 

Frank  was  on  his  knees  before  Her,  and  took  the  hand 


428  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

that  twisted  and  untwisted  a  handkerchief  on  her  lap,  and 
put  his  arms  round  her  waist. 

"Make  it  come  true,"  he  said.  "For  God's  sake  make  it 
came  true.  Why  not  ?" 

"Because  it  is  a  fairy-tale,"  said  Katherine,  "and  it 
could  never  happen  in  real  life.  Shall  I  tell  you  what 
would  happen?" 

"Don't  tell  me  anything  cruel,"  he  said. 

"The  truth  is  always  rather  cruel  in  this  world.  .  .  . 
This  is  what  would  happen,  my  poor  Frank.  You  would 
earn  a  hundred  pounds  a  year  at  the  very  most " 

"It  would  be  enough !" 

"And  at  the  worst,  because  your  next  novel  might  be 
a  failure,  nothing  at  all.  We  should  be  pensioners,  any- 
how, on  your  father  and  mother,  who  are  poor  them-, 
selves.  That  would  be  unbearable  if  we  had  any  pride — 
and  I  am  very  proud.  .  .  .  And  because  I  am  proud, 
Frank,  nothing  would  happen  as  you  have  said.  I  should 
quarrel  with  your  mother,  for  instance " 

"It  couldn't  be  done,"  said  Frank.  "Nobody  could 
quarrel  with  her." 

"I  should,"  said  Katherine  firmly,  as  if  she  had  made 
up  her  mind  to  quarrel.  "I  should  love  her,  I  know,  if 
I  went  to  visit  her  now  and  again,  but  not  if  I  were 
living  with  you  in  her  house.  She  would  never  forget 
that  she  is  your  mother,  and  I  should  never  forget  that 
I  was  your  wife." 

Frank  would  have  argued  the  point.  Like  all  men  he 
could  not  understand  this  point  of  view.  But  Katherine 
put  her  hand  over  his  mouth,  and  went  on  with  her  dread- 
ful tale  of  truth." 

"The  country  would  be  exquisite  at  first.  Oh,  I  could 
smell  those  flowers  when  you  talked  about  them!  I 
should  love  to  go  into  the  country  for  a  month — three 
months.  But  after  three  months,  six  months,  a  year  I 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          429 

should  hate  it  and  go  mad.  The  silence,  the  dark  nights, 
the  lonely  woods,  the  same  village  street,  the  same  vil- 
lage faces,  the  narrow  village  gossip,  the  squire  with  his 
same  old  stories,  the  squire's  wife  in  her  one  silk  dress, 
the  utter  exile  from  all  the  thrill  of  life — oh,  it  would  be 
impossible  to  me,  I  could  not  bear  it." 

"We  would  come  back  to  town,"  said  Frank.  "We 
would  take  a  flat  in  the  centre  of  things." 

"We  could  not  afford  it,"  said  Katherine.  "We  should 
be  too  poor." 

"Who  knows  ?"  said  Frank  with  desperate  cheerfulness. 
"I  may  be  rich  and  famous  by  that  time." 

"But  supposing  you  were  not?  Supposing  we  were 
still  so  poor  that  I  had  to  cook  the  meals  and  nurse  the 
babies — oh  yes,  there  might  be  babies." 

"I  pray  God  there  may  be  babies,"  said  Frank. 

"No,"  said  Katherine,  "not  on  £120  a  year.  I  am  not 
cut  out  for  it." 

She  burst  into  tears  and  said,  "That  is  why  I  said  I 
was  wicked,  Frank.  If  I  were  good  and  simple,  like 
you,  I  would  take  all  the  risks  and  be  glad  of  all  the 
drudgery.  If  I  were  good,  your  fairy-tale  would  all  seem 
true  to  me.  .  .  .  But  I  am  not  good  .  .  .  and  I  know  it 
would  never  come  true." 

"Well,  let  us  drop  the  fairy-tale,"  said  Frank,  very 
gloomily.  "What  do  you  want  to  do,  Katherine?" 

"I  only  want  one  thing." 

"Tell  me,"  he  said,  very  gently.  "I  am  not  a  cad.  I 
will  try  to  do  anything  to  make  you  happy." 

"I  want  to  go  back  to  Fleet  Street." 

"Is  that  the  secret?"  said  Frank,  rather  bitterly. 
"Are  you  one  of  those  people  who  can  never  leave  it?" 

"Yes,  I  am  one  of  those  people." 

She  spoke  quickly  and  rather  feverishly. 

"I  must  go  back.    I  shall  never  settle  down  to  the 


430  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

hum-drum  after  all  the  rush  and  scurry  of  things.  It 
is  in  my  blood  now.  I  must  be  seeing  things  and  doing 
things.  I  want  the  old  adventures,  all  the  friends,  and 
the  good  fun,  and  the  hard  work,  and  the  long  hours,  and 
the  indignities  and  the  joys  of  journalism.  Frank,  don't 
you  understand?  You  have  been  a  journalist.  You 
know  what  it  means  ?" 

"Yes,"  he  said.     "I  understand." 

He  understood  only  too  well.  He  too  hankered  to  be 
in  the  turmoil  again,  and  because  he  was  outside  he  had 
tried  to  forget  it  and  build  up  this  "  fairy-tale,"  as  Kath- 
erine  called  it,  of  a  quiet  country  life.  But  even  when 
he  had  spoken  with  glowing  enthusiasm  of  his  old  home 
and  peaceful  countryside  a  little  voice  had  whispered  to 
him  that  it  would  be  a  life  of  exile  and  loneliness.  What 
could  he  say  without  lying?  He  would  not  lie,  and  so 
he  said  to  Katherine,  "I  understand."  , 

After  a  little  while,  when  they  were  less  emotional, 
Katherine  went  to  a  drawer  in  a  cabinet  and  took  out  a 
letter  which  she  handed  to  Frank. 

"Read  it,"  she  said. 

Frank  read  it  as  if  it  were  his  death-warrant.  It  was 
a  letter  from  Silas  Bellamy,  telling  Katherine  that  upon 
his  recommendation  the  editor  of  a  Conservative  daily 
paper  was  willing  to  engage  her  as  a  lady  reporter,  at  a 
salary  of  £4  a  week. 

Frank  folded  up  the  note  in  its  first  creases,  and  handed 
it  back. 

"And  you  will  accept?"  he  said. 

She  looked  at  him  in  a  curious,  wistful  way. 

"Do  you  ask  me  to  refuse?  ...  If  so,  I  will,  Frank." 

He  was  silent  for  a  moment,  and  then  said  quite 
quietly  and  bravely — 

"ATo,  I  do  not  ask  you.  For  your  sake  I  hope  you 
will  accept.  It  is  a  good  offer." 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  431 

Katharine  slipped  down  on  her  knees  and  put  her  arms 
about  him. 

"Frank,"  she  said,  "don't  look  so  sad.  You  hurt  me 
with  your  white  face.  We  are  both  young  ...  in  a  few 
years  perhaps " 

Frank  Luttrell  spoke  in  a  low  voice,  and  the  words 
were  to  himself  rather  than  to  the  girl  whose  arms  were 
clinging  to  him. 

"I  shall  be  out  in  the  cold/*  he  said. 

Frank  stayed  two  months  longer  in  London,  but  he  was 
very  miserable,  and  his  low  spirits  prevented  him  from 
doing  any  successful  work.  Katherine  had  gone  to  her 
new  place,  and  he  saw  but  little  of  her,  as  she  was  out 
early  and  late.  At  last  he  decided  to  accept  the  urgent  en- 
treaties of  his  father  and  mother  to  go  home  to  them. 
Although  in  London  he  was  not  in  Fleet  Street,  and  his 
prophecy  to  Katherine  was  fulfilled.  He  was  "out  in  the 
cold."  Most  of  his  old  colleagues  had  found  corners  for 
themselves — many  of  them  on  sadly- reduced  salaries  in 
positions  of  less  distinction.  Even  the  rendezvous  in  the 
Fleet  Street  tavern  had  been  discontinued,  and  when 
Frank  went  there  one  day,  he  drank  a  cup  of  coffee  in 
loneliness  and  the  waiter  told  him  that  "all  the  gentlemen 
had  disappeared  one  by  one.  ...  It  makes  a  difference 
to  me,  sir." 

It  made  a  greater  difference  to  Frank,  because  it 
brought  home  to  him  rather  cruelly  that  he  was  a  derelict 
in  Fleet  Street.  He  was  now  eager  and  anxious  to  get 
away  into  the  country  where,  perhaps,  he  would  not  feel 
the  loss  of  his  old  associates  and  work  so  acutely.  He 
stayed  only  for  one  event.  He  was  best  man  to  Edmund 
Grattan  on  his  marriage  with  Margaret  Hubbard.  They 
were  married  at  St.  Ethelburga's  Catholic  Church,  and 
it  was  a  journalistic  wedding.  Many  members  of  Frank's 


432    THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

old  paper  were  present,  and  journalists  from  other  papers 
who  had  affectionate  regards  towards  the  little  Irish- 
man, and  in  their  time  had  been  among  "Mother  Hub- 
bard's"  unruly  boys.  The  most  remarkable  figure  in 
church  was  that  of  Christopher  Codrington,  whose  great 
height  always  distinguished  him  in  an  assembly.  He 
adorned  a  grey  frock  suit  of  the  most  elegant  style. 
Obviously  it  was  the  first  appearance  in  public  of  clothes 
worthy  of  their  wearer,  and  an  honour  to  their  tailor. 
Frank,  who  stood  next  to  him,  noticed  that  he  said  his 
prayers  into  a  new  silk  hat  of  noble  architecture  and  as- 
tonishing brilliance.  Evidently  he  was  very  prosperous. 
When  Frank  had  a  chance  of  speaking  to  him  Codrington 
said  that  happily  he  had  been  favoured  by  a  little  sun- 
shine in  his  leaden-hued  existence.  Through  the  influence 
of  a  friend  he  had  obtained  an  appointment  as  advertise- 
ment writer  to  the  Hilarity  Restaurant,  and  he  found  it 
more  profitable  than  ordinary  journalism.  He  begged 
Frank,  earnestly,  to  turn  his  attention  to  the  gentle  art  of 
advertising. 

After  the  ceremony  Margaret  was  very  full  of  tender- 
ness and  gladness  and  kissed  Frank  on  the  forehead  in 
the  vestry,  whispering  to  him  that  her  cup  of  joy  would 
have  been  full  to  the  brim  if  Katherine  and  he  had  stood 
before  the  altar  with  them  and  made  "a  double  event." 
Unfortunately  Katherine  was  not  even  in  the  church,  for 
she  had  been  sent  off  to  describe  another  wedding  of  more 
public  interest,  and  the  law  of  Fleet  Street  had  to  be 
obeyed. 

But  she  was  at  home  in  the  evening  at  Shaftesbury 
Avenue,  where  Edmund  Grattan  and  Margaret  Hubbard 
had  their  first  supper  as  man  and  wife.  Grattan  had 
taken  over  the  flat,  and  it  was  understood  that  Katherine 
was  to  stay  with  them. 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE          433 

Frank  said  good-bye  to  those  three  friends  quietly 
enough,  though  his  heart  was  very  full. 

"I  am  going  off  into  the  country  to-morrow,"  he  said, 
"and  if  I  have  any  luck  I  hope  to  get  on  with  a  second 
novel." 

Katherine  was  rather  silent  after  that,  and  in  the  hall, 
when  she  helped  him  on  with  his  coat,  she  seemed  loth 
to  let  him  go. 

"Don't  stay  away  too  long,  Frank,"  she  said,  "and  write 
to  me  every  day." 

For  a  few  moments  they  clung  to  one  another,  and  he 
kissed  her  as  though  he  would  never  see  her  again.  Then 
he  went  away,  and  early  next  morning  went  down  to  his 
old  home  in  Somersetshire. 

It  was  curious  how  quickly  he  seemed  to  slip  back  into 
the  old  life  again.  His  father  was  whiter  and  more 
absent-minded.  His  mother's  hair  was  streaked  with  sil- 
ver threads,  the  dog  had  lost  its  teeth,  village  children 
had  grown  up  to  be  strapping  lads  and  lasses  who  courted 
in  the  lanes,  two  or  three  old  familiar  faces  had  gone 
from  the  place  for  ever,  but  otherwise  everything  was  the 
same  as  when  he  had  left  it  for  the  Abbey  School  at 
King's  Marshwood,  and  afterwards  for  Fleet  Street.  His 
father  still  read  the  classics  in  the  evening,  with  the  back 
of  his  chair  against  the  table  and  the  lampshade  tilted 
so  that  the  light  fell  over  his  shoulder.  His  mother  still 
played  the  old  tunes,  dreaming  at  the  far  end  of  the  big 
room  in  half  darkness.  The  bear-skin  rug  on  which  he 
had  lain  as  a  boy  had  lost  some  of  its  hairs,  but  was  still 
there.  On  his  bedroom  shelf  were  the  old  dog-eared 
books  of  his  boyhood,  with  the  green-backed  volume  of 
Grimm's  Fairy  Tales.  Everything  was  the  same  except 
Frank  himself,  and  he  was  not  the  same  as  in  those  early 
days. 

For  a  time  he  enjoyed  the  peace  and  beauty  of  the  old 


434          THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

home,  and  his  soul  was  refreshed  and  purified.  But 
gradually  the  quietude  ceased  to  be  a  balm  to  him  and  be- 
came an  irritant.  Sometimes,  when  he  went  for  a  walk 
in  the  woods,  the  stillness  was  almost  terrible.  He 
yearned  for  the  roar  of  traffic,  he  would  have  given  half 
a  sovereign  to  hear  the  jingle- jangle  of  a  hansom  cab. 
He  had  strange  psychological  experiences.  Though 
Fleet  Street  was  a  hundred  and  twenty  miles  away  he 
was  haunted  always  by  the  thought  of  it.  If  a  church 
bell  struck  six  he  would  say  to  himself  "the  night  men 
are  just  coming  in."  When  he  lay  awake  at  night  and 
heard  the  clock  of  his  father's  church  chime  twelve  he 
would  think  "the  first  edition  is  just  going  to  press." 

When  the  village  postman  brought  the  Daily  Telegraph 
he  would  open  its  pages  and  its  headlines  would  give  him 
a  kind  of  nostalgia.  "Great  fire  in  the  City."  He  might 
have  been  there  watching  the  flames  and  seeing  the  work 
of  rescue.  'The  Kaiser  at  the  Guildhall."  That  was  a 
scene  he  would  have  been  sent  to  if  the  Rag  had  not  gone 
under.  Each  event  of  everyday  history  reminded  him  of 
the  old  colleagues  who  were  now  on  other  papers,  going 
here,  there  and  everywhere,  interviewing,  describing, 
criticising.  They  were  still  the  lookers-on  behind  the 
scenes  of  life.  He  had  been  one  of  them,  and  now  he 
was  out  of  it,  out  in  the  cold. 

Katherine  wrote  to  him  three  times  a  week,  always 
affectionately,  always  hurriedly — swift,  light-hearted,  de- 
lightful letters,  full  of  the  "shop,"  and  the  gossip,  of  the 
street  of  adventure.  He  read  them  feverishly  and 
eagerly,  as  though  their  words  were  magic  spells,  but 
each  letter  increased  his  restlessness,  his  yearning  to  get 
back  again  to  Katherine  and  life.  His  mother  and  father 
understood  a  little  of  what  was  passing  through  his  mind, 
but  only  a  little.  They  saw  that  he  was  fretful,  and  that 
he  did  not  settle  down  into  the  ruck  of  the  old  life.  But 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  435 

they  put  it  all  down  to  Katherine,  whom  he  had  described 
to  them  in  so  many  letters  and  about  whom  he  was  now 
strangely  silent.  They  could  not  understand  that  jour- 
nalistic life  could  have  any  appeal  to  him.  He  described 
some  of  the  incidents  of  his  career  in  Fleet  Street,  the 
indignities  and  hardships  of  the  profession,  the  squalor 
and  triviality  of  it  all,  and  his  father  would  say  again 
and  again,  "Ah,  Frank,  you  are  well  out  of  it.  It  is  not 
the  work  for  a  gentleman." 

Then  his  first  novel  came  out  and  was  well  received 
in  the  press,  and  obtained  high  praise  from  the  clergy- 
men's wives  in  the  neighbourhood,  who  called  in  old- 
fashioned  vehicles  in  the  hope  of  seeing  the  young  literary 
man  whom  they  had  known  as  a  shy  and  silent  boy.  They 
found  him  still  taciturn,  but  quite  polite  and  nice,  and 
they  were  rather  proud  of  having  a  real  novelist  on  their 
list  of  acquaintances.  Financially,  however,  the  book  was 
not  triumphantly  successful.  Frank  received  another 
cheque  for  twenty  pounds  on  account  of  royalties,  and 
that  with  a  few  odd  guineas  earned  from  time  to  time 
by  quiet  essays  which  appeared  in  the  paper  which  had 
first  encouraged  his  literary  ambitions,  the  Spectator,  was 
all  he  earned  during  the  first  half-year  of  his  exile. 

But  he  now  completed  a  second  novel.  It  was  a  story 
of  London  life  again,  with  a  stronger  plot  and  a  more 
passionate  interest.  His  father,  to  whom  he  read  it  out, 
was  frankly  amazed  that  Frank  should  reveal  such  a 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart,  and  was  rather  nervous 
as  to  the  way  in  which  he  had  gained  such  an  experience. 
His  mother,  who  was  a  delicate  and  discriminating  critic, 
did  not  care  for  it  as  much  as  she  had  liked  Richard 
Dream-a-Day,  but  admitted  that  it  might  be  more  popu- 
lar. Frank  sent  it  to  the  publisher  of  his  first  novel,  and 
at  the  end  of  another  three  weeks  received  an  offer  of 
eighty  pounds  for  the  entire  copyright.  It  was  a  blow 


436  THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE 

to  his  hopes.  He  had  believed  that  on  the  strength  of  his 
first  success  his  new  book  would  be  worth  at  least  £150. 
Even  that  would  be  poor  payment  for  six  months'  work. 
Certainly  there  was  no  living  to  be  made  by  novel-writ- 
ing. 

But  a  few  days  later  he  was  consoled  for  this  disap- 
pointment by  a  letter  he  received  from  Silas  Bellamy, 
offering  him  a  place  on  a  paper  to  which  he  had  just  been 
appointed  editor. 

"I  have  not  forgotten  your  work  on  the  late  lamented," 
wrote  Bellamy,  "and  I  shall  be  proud  and  glad  if  you  will 
join  me  again,  at  the  same  salary." 

Frank  sent  him  a  telegram  ten  minutes  after  he  had 
read  the  letter. 

"I  accept  with  joy." 

At  the  same  time  he  sent  a  line  to  Katherine  Halstead 
"I  am  coming  back  to  Fleet  Street." 

And  so  this  story  ends,  not  nicely  finished  off,  with 
wedding  bells  in  the  last  line,  as  all  good  stories  should, 
but  incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  like  so  many  stories  of 
real  life.  As  the  biographer  of  Frank  Luttrell,  journal- 
ist, I  should  have  been  glad  to  have  married  him  happily 
to  Katherine  Halstead,  but  when  I  met  him  last  week 
in  Fleet  Street  he  was  still  a  bachelor.  Yet  in  spite  of 
being  overworked  and  looking  worn  and  rather  worried, 
he  was  resolutely  cheerful  with  me. 

I  know  him  well  enough  to  ask  a  plain  question  plainly, 
and  I  said,  "Frank,  when  are  you  going  to  be  married  to 
Mistress  Kate?" 

He  laughed  in  his  boyish,  nervous  way,  and  flushed  up 
to  the  forehead. 

"Perhaps  you  had  better  ask  the  lady,"  he  said. 

He  spoke  these  words  to  avoid  a  direct  answer,  but  I 


THE  STREET  OF  ADVENTURE  437 

have  decided  to  act  upon  them.  I  shall  talk  seriously  to 
Katherine  Halstead  the  very  next  time  I  see  her.  Frank 
is  too  good  a  fellow  to  be  spoilt  by  a  girl  who  cannot  make 
up  her  mind. 


THE  END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


